Atheist Experience 23.10 with Matt Dillahunty & Jim Helton

[Music] [Music] hello everybody welcome to the Atheist Experience we are live today's Sunday March 10th 2019 unless you're watching this after we do it live and then you know it's whatever time and date it is when you're watching it pretty easy I'm Matt Dillon hosting this week joining me Jim Hilton from American Atheists thank you thank you we've got a handful of announcements to get all the way there's a bunch of people on the other side and and that is in part at least in small part that Austin's South by Southwest festival convention Eve super awesome thing has started as of Friday it for those who don't know go look it up South by Southwest it's movies music technology I don't know whatever basically it's the week where you really would have to pay me a lot to go downtown because I live here and so the my city has changed but it's still awesome and if you're down by South by Southwest talk to some of the locals about things that you might want to do other than just South by like I would recommend that you go to Esther's follies this weekend if you can if there's actually a show and that you hit Torchy's tacos and countless other places but I'm not here to advertise for all of these other things we have stuff of our own that we need to advertise and as a reminder I head up the Atheist community arts and social media Facebook and elsewhere and you'll find that the March edition of the magazine is now out coming up in two weeks right 20 the weekend of the 22nd 23rd March 23rd is atheist day International atheist Day kind of a new spin on something that's you know been done in various types and things before this time by atheist Republic but the Atheist community of Austin is gonna be doing man I like it's like a weekend of events there's going to be Thomas Westbrook aren't around a bunch of others gonna be at the Capitol talking about you know atheism on it on on this atheist Day weekend and then Seth Andrews will be here for events as well I will not be here and so if you're not in Austin you can either come down to Austin for that or you could book yourself for the free thought cruise if it's not already too late because that's where I'll be that weekend I'm going I'm driving all the way down to Fort Florida boarding a cruise ship along with a couple hundred other free thinkers atheists secular humanists etc and I'll be doing the my magic and skepticism show and a meet and greet and then touring in Cuba and in the Bahamas although I just saw a travel advisory for the Bahamas so I'm a little nervous State Department puts out travel advisories and I haven't paid attention to any of them since since I was in the Navy and we would get them handed to us he'd be like oh we're pulling into port here and here's all the State Department's noter notifications and stuff so that's what's going on in the immediate future but you're here to talk about a couple of things that are coming up the following month in April and beyond yes so very excited American atheist convention is coming Easter weekend in my hometown in Cincinnati Ohio it's going to be at the Hilton Netherland Plaza super excited Jim / fell secular groups are gathering this ol arch to celebrate the first we're getting audio for something that we're not seeing so I'll stop talking so Jim ogre fellows Elba keynote he's with the Supreme Court decision for marriage equality we're gonna have plenty of workshops and other things going on are really reaching out to the local community the local affiliates and activists to come out there to learn how to get involved in their community how they can make a difference and make change at their City Council's school boards and state-level legislation so we're very excited about our convention coming up in Cincinnati and I'll go ahead and pause for a second because if Mark has the ad for atheist Day ready to go as it sounds like he might have then this would be a good time to insert it and around the world secular groups are gathering this March to celebrate the first International atheist Day while we encourage atheist groups to come together and celebrate we invite you to join us because lacking religion does not constitute hate because in many parts of the world disbelief can have tragic consequences because it's time to create an international community because where we can be counted we should stand up this March 23rd and join us as we demand to be counted [Music] there you go there's more information available click the websites visit the ACA human Washington's social media stuff and a 'this republic as well and then as we move towards april for the american atheist convention and i'm i'm coming up for that as well and it's i try to go every year I had to miss last year because of a conflict but I'm looking forward to this I mean we've got a new president we've got an interesting lineup as speakers are already set and I think there's possibly a few more announcements coming I don't know somebody was going to call me tomorrow but what's exciting is the since city of Cincinnati rolled out the red carpet for us they were like what do we have to do to get your business we want the American atheist convention here the hotels were like we want American atheist here and to have that hospitality and then really want us to be here and what they offered and what they're doing to work with us and a unique thing is we are going to have a rally on Good Friday on Fountain Square outside in the middle of downtown and middle of all the businesses on Good Friday to kick off the convention which we're super excited about outstanding and then you've got say you started when I first met several years ago and and we would mostly bump into each other in and around Kentucky and Tennessee and Cincinnati or the big national convention I you were working with the tri-state community there and lots of axes aamir whole families involved with activism your your daughter is one of my favorite activists but you kind of really jumped in took charge and did things and you did things in a different way than some other organizations were doing it was incredibly successful and now you're you know working with American Atheists what what's your official title is it now is it national national field organizer national field organizer so if you've got a field and you needed to be taken care of contact Jim I'm your person yeah basically I took the business model of the tri-state freethinkers of aces activism community service education social we wanted to build a true community for atheists humanists and and one thing and we wanted to make change in our community where as a theist we could be involved where the mayor's inviting us to come speak right you know interfaith leaders are asking atheist to do invocations we can do be keynote speakers at the Women's March March for science in front of 10,000 people and we really integrated ourselves and we've taken that plan and now my job is to work with affiliates in groups or people that want to start groups in their community that want to get involved how do we raise money how do we form a board how do we do these things and how do we get involved in our community and so I travel the country helping groups do those very things to take on the issues in their state that's important to them because it varies what's important to Kentucky I live in between the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter right it's very different than say Florida or New York or California of whatever your issue may be we help them with toolkits go after those things and this is you know this is a really good example of something we talked about many times because for years there was discussion of you know Oh should I be a firebrand or a diplomat and my my answer was always why can't you be both and do both and you know I've hosted this show for well I've been on it for almost nearly 15 years but hosted 14 years this week I think I think it was like March 13th or something 2005 was the first episode I host a full time but there's different styles and it's interesting as I go around you know if I'm doing a debate somebody'll be like oh I watched you on the show and then I came and saw you the debate and it's like you're two different people and I'm like yeah because those are two different environments well why can't you do the show like you do a debate oh that's easy because we have six phone lines multiple callers and the people who are calling in aren't necessarily prepared for a formal structured debate with all this plus when I'm in a debate I can't hang up on that person and go to another caller they're the only person there and what I try to keep in mind for me doing the show is that this is this is somebody's first introduction to atheism to secularism to humanism etc I'm not always going to get it right but I think there are different tactics and different tactics needed there are different things that are going to change people's minds sometimes it's going to be an approach that is similar to what I might do sometimes gonna be approach like yours so it may be more like Eric's or Jamie's or Tracy's gonna reach more people than any of us because Tracy's just awesome but the people believe for different reasons they're gonna give it up for different reasons but if your goal isn't necessarily to give people to give it up but instead to reach like atheist normalcy I can tell you this no matter how terrible or awesome somebody might think I am or my approach to this is the mayor's never invited me to come speak and yet I've spoken at the Capitol on many occasions because that's what we do and if the goal is I think it is has always been for me when we talked about the Atheist community is an organization for positive atheism there were some people who took that as if oh that means positive in is we are affirming there are no gods and largely the community the entire time I've been involved with it has viewed it in a in a sense that positive means we are going to be putting a positive faith on atheism based on atheism and that doesn't mean that we're not going to get upset that we're not gonna you know have arguments these are these you heated conversations and so it'll be interesting today as we go through and take phone calls to watch how two different activists who like each other and get along and generally support what each other does might take different tax and addressing questions yeah we take different approach I think a lot of people argue which is the best way the right way but like you said it's different ways and they're all good and they all have their their value and they all have their good approach it depends on asking you what your target is yeah what you're trying to do and you have to take different tactics like if you're protesting the Ark Encounter is very different than if you're feeding the homeless alongside of church I normalize atheism that you're good people they're very different approaches or if you're on a Lobby day talking to your representative it's a very different approach there's a conversation that my very good friend Anthony Magna Bosco and I have had many times including on this program because he's you know as Street epistemology advocate and I have some issues with that because I'm not convinced that you're actually you know came out in that popularity because of Bogosian book a manual for creating atheist and I'm not convinced that this actually creates atheist it may on occasion get people to recognize that they're not quite as confident as they thought they were whether that's permanent or temporary I don't know but it's certainly a good thing because I think all of us are in favor of getting people to ask questions to question things that they believed and if you leave this show you know after watching today and you you came in as a theist of some stripe let's say you're your reform Jew and you have your particular notions about God and you watch the show and you're like yep I listen to them I thought about it those guys they you know they don't have the same understanding I do my reasons are good and all that did was just kind of reaffirm what I believe well cool at least you listened I'm not necessarily convinced that you paid attention but I haven't done the show yet so it could be a train wreck today you never know but just getting people involved in having the conversations is probably the primary goal because we know I just saw this great study that I've referenced like twice in the past few days we have a lot of in-group out-group problems and that goes down to you know along racial lines along gender lines along religious lines etc and there's a couple of great studies that are taking a look at this one of them that I was reading about basically divided people up into random clusters and so you might have in a group of 10 you might have two people who are Hispanic a couple African Americans a couple Asians a couple of white folks and and with varying different you know religious views or political views and you get them to integrate just a little bit participate and work jointly on something and then you start asking them questions and you and you have two of these groups that are functionally identical with the same characteristics and once they've worked within their in-group and then you ask them questions about their group and you ask them questions about this other group like what percentage of people in your group share your political views they tend to estimate that the people in their group more share their views more than the people who are in their out group even though the truth is these two groups are functionally identical in their distribution and it's very easy it's very interesting for me about how quickly it is that you can break down the normal barriers of our in-group and out-group and yet how bad it is that we're just going to create new ones and so it's like you know if if you're if you're a senator and you've been opposed to to gay marriage forever and then you have a close relative that comes out as gay all of a sudden your views are incredibly more likely to change and if you thought that atheists were terrible or if you thought bad things about some other ethnic group getting to know them and working alongside them and working towards a goal now put you guys together in an in-group where at a minimum you're thinking well he's not like those other people in that group but we're always going to draw lines getting people aware of this metal level analysis of how we go about drawing lines seems to me to be something it's of paramount importance I don't know how many people are gonna get it even after having explained to them that this is what they're doing but man if if humanism could do any one thing it would be to do more experiments like that get the information out so that people realize you are manufacturing in-group out-group lines all the time oh my family is not your like your family my church isn't like your church and then when people hear all this stuff about how the Catholic Church is a criminal organization that's been shuffling child rapists around oh well that's not my Catholic Church yes it is and it's also your Baptist Church and your Episcopalian Church and all these other things once we start realizing that we can't have this personal bias it makes it a lot easier to say you know what maybe I was wrong about that maybe there's a different way of looking at it and maybe when I have a conversation with an atheist I don't have to begin with God has given them over to a reprobate mind and they are trying to destroy you know kill babies and wreck the country and all this yeah I mean we need to get outside of our bubble and interact with the general public and when I as an out a theist who might wear a t-shirt or people may recognize me and Matt you probably weigh more than me but I want to make sure they have the best experience possible whether that's my bank teller you know whether it's the the waitress who I'm waiting with that they see somebody that's an atheist and I want to make sure they have the best experience possible because they may have had the stereotype of what an atheist is but that few minute action with me maybe like huh he seemed like a nice person and it may make it easier for the next person they come across seeing that's probably where I failed because I don't care if they have the best experience I just want them to have just a good enough experience that it functionally changes how they thought about atheists in general I don't have enough time to give everybody the best experience no I'm kidding so on that note also Ark Encounter stuff is coming up in what July July 6 we protested the Ark Encounter every year the misconception is it's failing and going out it generated 67 million dollars in 2017 it's doing well it's not doing anywhere near the projections of two and a half million people right but it's getting close to a million dollar a million people every year just under so cashwise with all the state incentives they got with all the government incentives the separation religion government you know it's important to bring that from a legislative point of view of all the problems Kentucky I think it's the symbol of what's wrong when I went to the Ark Encounter and I haven't been to the Creation Museum but I did go to the Ark Encounter there's a picture up on the screen now there is it was that the first Ark Encounter protest that was the second one second one when I went I didn't even pay for my ticket somebody else bought me the ticket and then when they told me how much the ticket was I felt ripped off and I didn't even pay because as I walk around this thing it's not even really an ark it's like half of an ark it's like all right the fat bill to a building to a building yeah so from this side it's like a pretty good magic trick because from this side it looks like an ark an from the other side it looks like a building with like some wood tacked on to the end of it and I realize that you know you've got to do some stuff like that to make it open to the public but I walked around and it was there were some cool-looking displays and some amazing woodwork you know the Amish folk did a wonderful job for them but oh my gosh it was like here's a big piece of poster board with a whole bunch of text and a few graphics on it I I'm kidding you I'm not kidding you at all my assessment was that a good 35 to 40 percent of everything you see in the Ark Encounter you would have been better served getting a coffee table book because that's all you were really doing was walking around looking at pages of a book look here's a picture here's a you know this and I know a lot of museums will do stuff like that but they tend to have more displays and the displays that the Ark Encounter were here's a wax figure or a semi animatronic version of a person or on occasion here's a little you know like a whole bunch of empty cages then here's one with what we think might have been the dinosaur that was hiding in the archetype I mean it's big which is impressive on the scale but like you said the actual exhibits in the displays there's not much there yeah I think you could you could cut that thing down to 1/5 the size have everything in there and just on you know one loop and boom you're out in less time yeah I got the torta and I had the pleasure of Bill I invited me to tour it with him so I got the tour for my kids birthday go through it and he agreed to do some selfies which my favorite picture is Ken Ham in the background scowling pissed off his bill Nyes taking pictures with my kids and my favorite part of the whole thing and it's on YouTube Bill Nye turned to me is like Jim I'm surprised they let you in but as soon as I walked in the door as soon as I walked in through that gate there was security by my side like hey Jim how you doing and then even escort through the thing they didn't they didn't do that for me but I did ask them if Ken Ham was around because I would have loved to talk to him while I was there he was not interested in that or not available I don't want to say he wasn't interested maybe he was really interested in just not available that we invited them to the American atheist convention if they want to come have a discussion because they decide to throw their own convention instead of you have to talk to atheists and I'm like we're right here I sent them a message and volunteered I will speak or debate at your convention for free and I will pay for you to come into our convention as well or you know figure out a way to get them in and and actually the American atheist had done it before because Ray Comfort I believe spoke at American atheist convention in 2008-2009 or something along with us before my time yeah and and if I'm misremembering I apologize maybe this is some kind of on like if somebody knows post it in chat get a link whatever else but yeah I was more than happy to say why don't we do when it doesn't have to be a formal debate we could just do a discussion like I will sit down at your convention with Ray and Ken both of them they can ask me questions the audience can ask me questions and then we'll turn around and do the same thing for you we can you know and granted I'm not in charge of the convention so I don't get to schedule anything but I'm pretty sure that if I could have got Ken Ham to sit up on stage in exchange for this you know let's exchange speakers thing we'd have found some time we would have found so and we had this discussion because I formally invited them because they they send staff to the protest so they had staffers there and we talked to them about it and inviting them and we talked about it if Ken Ham would come we would be willing to have this sit-down conversation I think the conversation would be better than a formal debate absolutely they've so far have expressed zero interest in in doing so the other thing that strikes me funny about this is that the American cadiz convention with one or two exceptions is on Easter weekend and they're like why are you doing that are you just doing it to like mock Christianity yeah no no no that's not actually it is a weekend it is a holiday weekend that a lot of people have off and that atheists don't have anything to celebrate because unlike Christmas Easter isn't cool and so it seemed like a good weekend plus you know there's some opportunity to get some publicity in there but when Kenan Rey announced that they were having a convention that same weekend I was sitting here going how are you gonna get Christians to come out on Easter weekend to your convention and that's not the only one there's another big Christian convention in Cincinnati that weekend also they there's a third now Wow you've actually how do you exactly how much Easter sucks the single most important holiday in all of Christianity is Eastern undeniable from a biblical from a biblical and Theological standpoint the the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single most important point in all of Christianity and that makes the Easter weekend what should be the most important holiday and even after they stole it from pagans and tried to modify it and give away chocolate and have bunnies and Easter eggs and do everything they can to make it fun Christians still don't want to [ __ ] go to church on Easter they want to go to oh let's go to a convention just so we can yell at the atheists in the American atheist commits and solve all those problems for being my family I am out of town like yeah it is fantastic it just solved all my problems all right I'm not no we're gonna start taking callers we got full lines and I want to make sure we get to as many of these people as possible we've got Aiden in Ontario who's got a problem oh well now that I read a larger description of your your point I'm not sure that we have that much of a disagreement but go ahead and welcome to the show okay that's entirely possible yeah well if I can just explain my disagreement but I think I have with you although apparently I might not it's that I've heard you I think I've heard you use the the argument or argumentative points against the Bible that that basically you know it says that bats are a type of bird which obviously they aren't or or the whales or are a type of big fish and obviously that's oh that's wrong in the Bible I don't yeah so I don't think I've ever used I've never pointed out that the Bible says whales are big fish because I don't think the Bible says that at all the the Jonah story says big fish and a lot of people interpreted that as whale but the Bible is I'm not aware of any verse where it says that whales are big fish now there is a verse there is a verse where bats are essentially it wouldn't be my problem with that one anyway yeah there is a verse where bats are essentially lumped in with birds when they're not Birds and I'm not saying that the Bible is wrong about all these other things because it seems to suggest that bats are birds I'm just saying that that's in the Bible and it's not technically correct it has no bearing on anything else in the Bible other than if somebody claims that the Bible is the perfect Word of God that's an easy way to show that they're not correct so is the body and so I guess that you actually have some disagreement then because yeah I would say that doesn't I mean I don't think it's the perfect Word of God but I would say that that that doesn't disqualify upfront because basically because it is a flying thing right and presumably their their decision a I understand something together would be you know these are the flying guns these are the swimming things I understand Eden I understand it and if your view is that you know ancient people who didn't understand you know modern taxonomy wrote it and included it in with the flying things fine it's it's only a if you're claiming that a perfect God delivered a perfect word and then pointing out an imperfection is a problem if you just want to say that yeah ancient people you know the Hebrew language is limited their understanding of stuff certainly we didn't have the taxonomic classes that we have now and so they just listed bats with flying things because that's their best understanding and it's not all that in Iraq urine then I'm gonna say yes you're absolutely correct I have no issue with it it's not like I was a Christian for 25 years read a verse where bats were included and then said whoop this god stuffs just malarkey that that's not remotely what happened yeah well that would obviously be the other issue is that would be that obviously nobody would find it convincing as a problem with the Bible yeah it's one of those things where I mean you know granted I've done a bunch of events with sam harris and and you know we like each other we agree on many things there's some things we don't but in his letter to a Christian nation when he spent that I mean it's a tiny tiny little book I've talked about this before he talks about the bottle story where there's a where he says the Bible says pi equals 3 and the Bible doesn't ever say that at all it describes a well and into the dimensions as well and then if you do the math you end up with pi being 3 and they're like aha we've got you and there are actually Christian apologists who've drawn wells actual diagrams of wells where you can have a 30 cubits circumference and a 10 meter diameter depending on whether you measure from the inside of the well to the outside of the well you know when you get the wall thickness and stuff like that right yeah it's it's still a pretty close approximation but at the end of the day my objection to Sam including it wasn't that he was technically wrong although I would argue he was technically wrong it is because there's not a Christian on the planet who's gonna go oh man that story about the well and then getting the value of Pi wrong like that screw Jesus I'm done that's never going to happen and if you're putting out a book that is called letter to a Christian nation and you want to highlight problems in their theology and the doctrine in the Bible that's one of the weakest possible things you could include and for it to be in there in a small book I'd I found kind of silly and just like the bats and birds you can pick your flaw yeah you can pick there's so many to choose from and just because you comment on one doesn't mean that's your argument to just prove or go through Christianity but there's just so many I wasn't trying to claim that that was your argument against yes yeah yeah no no it's it's a quick thing to go to there's also you know whether or not hairs chew the cud and other stuff like that and they're only yeah there are only points against people who are like oh the Bible is the perfect word of God inspired by man and if you find an error then it's just you know man changing things after the fact well then it's at a minimum it's clearly no longer still a perfect word of a god and then you can get into stuff like you know mark 16 verses 9 through 20 which don't exist in the oldest manuscripts and that's where you get into the notion that people can if they're truly working doing God's work they can drink any poisonous thing and it won't hurt them and they can handle serpents so yeah there's loads of problems but my biggest problem is setting aside the entire Bible I find no evidence no way to confirm supernatural events or causation and no good evidence for the proposition of any God or anything supernatural and pointing to a book is never going to do it no matter how right the book was even if it said that even if like the verse after the bat's thing said that technically bats aren't birds but you won't find this out for a thousand years that would have been really cool but it still doesn't mean it came from a God it would it would be nice if they were thinking you know what happens with a lot of people is that and this happens in in Christianity and Islam in particular where science discovers something and that people go back and scour through and try to find a way where they're their holy book made a prediction oh see it was right the whole time well even if that were the case who we didn't know it was right until we actually went out and tested it so it was useless information it's like oh that germ theory of disease it in Matthew 15 where the Pharisees are coming after Jesus and they start with this you know why didn't why do your guys not wash their hands which is tradition Jesus had an opportunity there to say you know what we really should be washing our hands to get rid of those pesky little things that get on our hands that caused us to become sick but instead Jesus commits a too quick a fallacy basically saying oh yeah well you're a hypocrite too and you know because you don't advocate for you know honoring my father or mother and stuff and oh by the way it's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you it's what comes out of your mouth that defiles you which he's talking about yeah I just did I just did a video about that a week or a month ago so it's kind of fresh in my mind but it's funny here was an opportunity for somebody that they viewed to be God incarnate to tell us something good and useful and instead he commits a logical fallacy basically saying yeah well you're a big hypocrite too and then doesn't point out to people that it might be a good idea to wash their hands before they eat in the using the holy book of your religion when every religion uses their holy book yeah for all the gods like give me an argument that doesn't prove other religions also yes you know that's unique to yours I need a unique argument and you have to be to his credit one other that's actually probably the best point you can make against any one of those because it means you don't have to go into in-depth on what exactly is wrong with the specific argument if it's you can just go to well obviously this would prove any other religion right as well so obviously it doesn't prove yours yeah it's you know very rare that I find somebody even if we have a top a debate topic that's supposed to be about a particular religious doctrine very rarely do we spend that much time on that doctrine and how they are and why they're convinced that it's correct instead we instead end up with arguments for like that would work for any deity there's a period of time where we were trying to schedule a team debate in Washington or Oregon somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and I wanted to do I want to have myself and Enid attaboy who's an ex-muslim as one of the team's and then get a pair of Christian apologists who were supposed to be arguing on behalf of any Christian doctrine you know like oh the resurrection or whatever and then we would sit there and every time they used an argument that would apply to Islam as well that's where he no is gonna get up and point out that yes your argument isn't for Christianity this also applies to Islam as well and I was gonna I was gonna run a charity event to raise money on exactly how much time I would need to spend speaking at all during that debate because if all they did was prevent prevent present generic arguments for hideous to God I wouldn't have to say anything Hina would just wipe the floor with them and we raise money for charity but anyway and I appreciate the call and yeah we're we're not that that is not a big deal yeah I yeah glad I was able to call in I'll be listing the rest of it all right thanks thanks we're gonna keep going here we've got Tim in Wisconsin and I'm gonna let you Jim start in with with Tim because how are you Tim it says here that your kids wanted you to call in you can't how they did my son Leo and Lucas made call and they're a longtime listeners and they thought it would be really funny to me : so I'm calling him right now wait so they learned of my story they want you to call in to amuse them and yeah and who said yes yeah yeah you're a great dad yeah you got points so far yeah so I'm gonna let Jim start in with this so that so that because I think that possibly your kids were waiting for me to eviscerate whatever it is that you were about to say and I'm just not going to all be nice but then you shouldn't disappoint all rated by the end maybe yeah anyway we're glad we're glad you're here Jim go ahead all right well congratulations on your show and I actually have a birthday coming up on March 14th this week I want the month of the 31st so we're all marked by happy birthdays yeah thank you well let me just give you a little bit of background I was raised Catholic and my parents through the through the 70s and through the 80s were part of the evangelical movement and we moved there and for a very long time I was very much involved with the evangelical community I raised my kids in a community church but then my wife at the time her aunt Ripley kept on giving me all these Catholic books and I was like you know I really want to find out what the truth is and so I started reading and all the research that I've read about Christianity really pointed to the Roman Church and so I made that switch and we were going to church and my son Luke who has Asperger's just kept on sitting in the pews and just lying there during the church services and so one service after catechism we went to the Dairy Queen I said Luke you know what's going on and it's just basically said dad you know I don't believe this anymore and as a fundamentalist Christian I was very concerned about his eternal future sure and so we started having these arguments and discussions back and forth and so for me as a Christian I was more concerned about his eternal future and burning in hell and so we started going back and forth and he heard send me videos and then articles and then I started getting books and I started to do the research and as I did the research he left for a trip to Mexico and as he was in Mexico I was reading all these books to make a long story short after I do all this research and what I what I've concluded is that the origin of Christianity is in Rome and there there's actually a book that you can read called Caesars in Rome if you're familiar with that and what I've concluded in this is that all religions are at equal standing they have evolved just like culture religion and speech and we're all part of the same global tribe and so when my son came back very first thing I did was I took all these books I have read and I'm not going to get into the detail with little tour but that was one of them and I had him in a plastic bag and I set him on the table when I bought him an ice cream and then I sat down with him and he was sitting right across to me I said Luke have done a lot of research and you know basically I told my said you know what right and as I stood up you just heard sweep and cry and I've never seen my son cry before because I thought and I stood in judgment over my son and his eternal future and as a Christian I was very concerned to that so and where I stand now with my faith and religion is that they're all in equal grounds I'm not an atheist I am a theist I would say that you know from the research that I'm done I'm probably more of an idealist than anything else and I've done a lot of research and I don't think I'm here to convince any of your listeners or any of your viewers of what to believe or not to believe I respect your views it is a faith it's a belief it's very difficult to prove anything because if and I'll put that out there for both of us if we're if we're seeking the truth and we want to embrace the truth wherever it is we're willing to build there and we continue to have these discussions and I think that's for the reason why if you wanted me to come on the show today and as I've done my research there's some things that don't necessarily prove that God exists but definitely point toward a god I'm not talking about a personal God not talking about a genie that controls things because if you you know watch one of my favorite movies and Forrest Gump there's two questions that are asked in the movie are we predestined like Lieutenant Dan or are things like a box of chocolates like mama said and I think we're in a time where you know you got the free thoughts you have a free will to go where you want to go and do what you want to do there's some things with them the Christian beliefs that people have a hard time explaining if God controls everything and I'll just give you one simple example if a baby is born and it passes away and there's no expression of faith then some Christian beliefs some Christian doctrines say that they pass a special grace but if the true nature or the the fallen nature of man is in place then that weren't really apply but there's some doctrine say well there's a special grace here and even within the Catholic think there's a special very supplies very well again going back to religion this is a creation of man just like language is a creation of man just like culture is a creation of man just like dress is a creation of man and so I think we are in the very infancy and a very very science a very infancy of understanding all things brilliant work and the way I see the world now is totally different I see the world boldly I see you I see Jim right Jim yeah as my brother's on this planet and we're all trying to do one thing you've really thought about this you're trying to uncover the truth there's a for the truth there's a lot to unpack there I'm just dead let me let me start address this from a parent what I just want to say one more thing sure that you know you look at some of the greatest minds like Einstein I mean Einstein basically said you know this it's very very difficult to understand we see a universe Marvis we arranged obeying certain laws but we understand those laws dimly our limited mind cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellation and then nikola tesla said the idea came to me like in a flash of lightning in in an instant the truth was revealed to him there is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science he's wrong and then or was wrong intimidate said other thing i just want to say one more thing they keep saying that in relationship to max planck all matter originates and it was only by a virtue of a force we must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscience intelligent mind and as I age I'm not the same person I was when I was a child I'm on my first memory as a child is when I walked out into the world and experienced the world I did not know how to speak but I could experience God I felt God I think God's presence I didn't know the words of God I didn't know any church or any religion and so that's what I carry with me and that's why I believe in God so it's a belief okay you guys believe right now that there is no God no that's nothing he's so terrific God okay so we've got a million things to get to thank you for quoting so many scientists who I think are monumentally wrong on the subject it doesn't add anything to either side to cite somebody you know Max Planck was wrong Einstein was wrong Isaac Newton was wrong you know but go ahead Jim I'm gonna let you pick apart a lot of these arguments but the one thing that caught my attention is apparently I have a fourteen year old and a 15 year old you know an office parents we think it is our job to you know we bring up our children we educate them but I will tell you from having two amazing children I learned as much from them often times and the fact that you know I think it's important you listen to your son and you have a conversation because a lot of parents it can be very unhealthy when you have that view that you're gonna burn in hell forever and I've seen parents abandon their kids and and that it can be so harmful so and I know you had those thoughts but from what I hear I'm hoping that you know you're actually having a dialogue and it's okay if you don't agree and that you know most importantly of all these things is that this is your son and you family and that is the most important thing and so I want to thank you for that now some of these argument to work while you're listening your it sounds like you're on this journey you went this path and you went off the path quite a bit and I'm gonna let Matt talk about some of some of these arguments and fallacies of you can't say they're all true like you know validating overall equal or all equal that that's just not possible they're saying different things encountered there's doing no way yeah Matt take it away and have fun so the first thing was you mentioned a book called Caesars Rome are you sure it wasn't a book called Caesars Messiah oh yeah okay my opinion and it's the opinion of some others is that that book is conspiracy theorists garbage and I really you know it's it's a mistake to portray Christianity as if it were invented in the 4th century by the Pope and the Masons the fact that there are similarities and stories doesn't lead to the conclusion that I believe that's I think that's at will but it doesn't necessarily do the inclusion it gets to but in any case what it led you to was this notion that all religions are equal and this is a common thing where people are trying to say you know religions are just man's filled attempt to all describe the same thing but the truth is that the varying religions make very different claims about things some of them have similar claims and that's not surprising the notion that there is a God is a natural transition from hey I'm a person and I have these capabilities too maybe there's a super person who has better capabilities - well then maybe there must be a maximally super person that has these capabilities it's a natural progression but that doesn't mean that it's remotely true and I have a problem saying that all religions are equal or whatever because the nature of their claims aren't the same and there are things we know we know that Scientology is an invented fiction by l ron Hubbard we know that Mormonism is a lie constructed by Joseph Smith a con artist so I can't put those on the same footing as other religions because we I also believe that there are other religions that weren't done in this sense of intentionally constructing a lie instead it's better it's for me it's more plausible that human beings tried to solve problems and they told stories and they made mistakes and the ones that were most popular and least subject to being proven false are the ones that persist today if you have a religion that says oh you know lightning is you know Odin you know chucking electricity down well okay that could still be the case but we understand enough about how electricity works how lightning works that that seems to be a really kind of ridiculous claim whereas if you say oh well we don't know anything beyond the Planck time and it seems philosophically intuitional that something must have occurred to start off Big Bang cosmology or whatever cosmological model was correct and you know when Max Planck looks at it and says that you know we have to infer a mind behind this I think he's just wrong I think what what the only reason that he's willing to infer a mind is because someone has already asserted a mind and so when we're looking for what is the explanation for any phenomena we make a list of all the candidate explanations then we try to evaluate how likely they are you know if there's a blood stain on my kitchen floor is it more likely that somebody cut themselves while preparing food or that a serial killer came in and slaughtered somebody and then drug the body off we know about the likelihood of those two events and then we reach a more probable conclusion the problem is what if the third option is God placed blood on the floor of my kitchen just to [ __ ] with me now that's a completely unfalsifiable proposition there's no way for me to show that that did not happen and for somebody who thinks that a god is absolutely real and that a God may do this sort of thing to me specifically for some purpose I can't understand then for them that's going to appear as if it's the most plausible explanation despite the fact that we don't have any evidence for a god we don't have anything to show how how probable it is that a God would do something like this so in your case moving from Catholicism away to well all these religions are are equal or perhaps equally wrong or somewhere we wrong whatever but still believing in some base theism the question that I have is what convinces you that there's some God behind it because you ruled out a number of specific types of gods like it seems like you are almost arguing for a deistic view where there's a god that started it all off but does not intervene and I just so I'm curious do you think there's a God that intervenes in in nature or the intervenes in a personal sense and what is it about what what is the case that keeps you convinced after abandoning religious doctrine that there still a God well I think I reference the I apologize for talking so fast me to my son respecting me my my son was texting me dad you're you're talking to that so it's probably a good idea keeps me from interrupting I think it goes back to when I was a kid and I walked out I couldn't speak I was still in diapers and I remember walking out the front porch and then walking out into the world and the thought without words I didn't know words were they know how to speak I knew and felt that I was a creature within this place whatever it was I didn't know what the world was I didn't know what the sky was I couldn't even formulate it but I just thought you know this is I am part of this and as I look at you know quantum mechanics oh boy and oh it it looks like that God is holding us all together or a horse is holding us all together okay those are two different things so Affairs haunted okay a force is very God a force is very ill-defined and a force doesn't necessarily have agency or any of the things that we attribute to God but for what I've heard so far is that you had self-awareness and no understanding of language and I'm presuming at this time that you also had no critical thinking skills and investigative skills and yet you reached a conclusion about a deity at that point that is just lingered with you your entire life I don't know if I would even say it was a deity other than a feeling that I was a creature within this time and space so and you think that's a good way to reach conclusions I think it's a it's a good intuition and I think we all have been tuition is it possible to have a personal experience and be wrong is that a good methodology used is it possible to have an intuition that's not correct of course it's possible to have an intuition and iran okay so how do we go about finding out whether or not an intuition is correct or not well that's what I've done the research on okay is it planning to you know quantum mechanics quantum mechanics has nothing to do with god there's no God in math there's no God in the calculations the people who best understand quantum meant quantum mechanics certainly tend to not believe in a God but if you begin with this intuition that there is a God and you see something within quantum mechanics something like you know spooky action at a distance now you have a ready potential explanation that is consistent with that observation but is not necessarily tied to that observation so the fact that there are things within quantum mechanics that we don't understand particularly well that might be consistent with God proposals and the fact that you're quick to like put God and force in the same category we need something where you define a God distinctly and show a demonstration of why this God exists or likely exists and it can't just be oh it seems like it would be a good explanation for this thing we've observed because that's what we've done forever that's called god of the guy I think it kind of goes back to our conscious Minds our awareness okay so you know this is consciousness and there's there plenty of studies out there were you know people that have died have come back and have seen themselves in the operating table people that have intuition with what's happening with other people if they pass away and this the overall connection I think okay so it must be so first of all consciousness isn't explained or understood second of all near-death experiences are near-death and not death and what we know about how the mind works is that a mind that is is in the process of dying starved of oxygen and other things may not be functioning correctly and that what most likely happens is that when somebody loses consciousness on an operating table and then comes - at a later time where they have been revived what does the brain do it tries to create a story that describes that missing period or that period of confusion but even if somebody were accurately describing let's say trip to heaven which has been faked and admitted to be faked even within the last year or so but also people tend to see the religious iconography that they grew up with Catholics tend to see catholic iconography and Baptists tend to see Baptists iconography and you very rarely get some crossover you certainly aren't going to get it where people haven't been you know exposed at all to these things but at the end of the day let's say that Jim dies tomorrow on the table and after a fairly long time let's say longer than anybody else he is now revived and he comes to me and he's like Matt let me tell you what happened while I was out now my first thing is how the hell do you know what happened while you were out the most reasonable conclusion is your brain made something up after the fact but setting aside that I don't want to jump to conclusions and he describes a trip to his version of paradise now let's say that he actually did experience all that how does it in any way confirm that what he experienced is in fact real and if he experienced that how do we determine that the best explanation for that is that there is a God showing him a paradise and not some other explanation well I think it's just faith it's your belief its resource don't please okay is there any position that you couldn't just take on faith couldn't I think white people are better than black people just on faith I don't know I would agree you don't think I could take that on faith I think you could I don't know if I like your example is what I'm saying of course you don't that's why I picked it I think you could you know I could believe that this glass of the God of the universe no is it is impossible no stop stop we already agreed that intuitions can be wrong and yet if you have to take an intuition on faith then it would seem to follow and I would hope that you would agree that it's possible that you could take an intuition on faith that is in fact wrong right of course you can okay now if faith can lead you to correct and incorrect conclusions then we should be able to agree that faith is not a reliable method for discovering the truth correct but we're gold expressing faith you're you're saying isn't faith that there is no God no first of all you know no stopped him stop seriously I promise I'm trying to help you I am NOT claiming that there are no gods and I'm not claiming that that position to whatever extent I have it is based on faith what I asked was if it's possible for faith to affirm an incorrect intuition then doesn't that mean that faith is not a reliable path to truth that was the question I know that's the question but you're saying that hey there's no but this is a yes this is a yes or no question isn't the easiest position no and the atheism no it stopped him I swear the Atheist position is completely irrelevant to this conversation just like the position on Bigfoot is irrelevant to the conversation just like the position on God is irrelevant to this conversation I'm talking about the methodology if faith can lead you to true conclusions and false conclusions then isn't faith an unreliable method for reaching the truth that's it it's an abstract about the methodology if you are basing your belief on observable science then I would have to agree but this God exists and if God exists all the time outside of stage time how could you ever conclude or be able to prove the God exists or doesn't exist you can't and that's why you could never be justified in believing in a God if your if your view is that you now believe in a God that could never be proved then you are admitting you are engaged in an irrational act you are affirming that you believe something is true and that you believe that you couldn't possibly be justified in believing that it's true and the telling part of this is this was a very simple question that had nothing to do with God no God Bigfoot whatever it was intuitions can be right or wrong and if you believe in intuition based on faith it can still be right or wrong and doesn't that mean that faith is not a reliable mechanism for discovering truth and there's one and only one curve to answer to that and that is yes but whatever is in your head would not allow you to say yes even though you know that's the only answer because you know that the follow-up question to that is you just justified your intuition based on faith and now you've acknowledged that faith is not a reliable path to truth so how then can you justify your belief and something inside your head knows that that's not the case which is why you wouldn't answer that simple obvious question where am I wrong where am i at all wrong did I think based on logic based on observable science there's no way to prove that God exists within this space-time if God exists outside of space-time so doesn't that mean and doesn't that mean you would need us some method other than science in order to have a justified belief of that I don't either but you provided a method which is faith which I pointed out is unreliable so now we now we've eliminated faith as a good method to tell the truth so we would need another method to tell the truth and if you don't know what that method is then isn't that an admission that you now believe something for which you have no reliable method to know that it's real I believe something that I don't have science at the current moment okay we've established we've established that you don't have science for it what do you have and how is it a reliable pathway to truth this is an intuition and Paes yep and and and if we would agree that an intuition in faith does not necessarily lead to truth and we agree on that right mm-hmm then you don't have a reliable method for your belief which means you cannot reasonably hold it but on the flip side of that science starts off with a idea a hypothesis a belief and then they go over testing no when they go through measurement and they go through and calculate it's it's not you know okay I just want to correct this because you equated hypothesis with belief the we would typically describe this is that there's some observation we need an explanation we come up with a hypothesis it's not a belief it is a suspicion it is a proposition about a possible explanation and then we go into the testing to confirm whether or not we have good reason to accept that this is a likely explanation and then when we reach the point where this becomes a theory which is the highest standard in science that is not an assertion that we are absolutely certain or that this is the truth all it means is this is the best supported model that best explains the observation and makes predictions in such a way that we can be reasonably confident that it's likely to be true it's not an assertion about truth but all that is secondary because if we spend time talking about how science would go about testing things and you've already said that science can't confirm God then it's pointless to talk about science if we're talking about whether or not somebody can rationally believe in a God so we would need another mechanism and I don't I don't know what that mechanism would be I don't either good whether we believe it or not I mean don't you believe that there is a truth out there is that either God exists either God exists or God God does not exist right correct I'm choosing I'm choosing to believe in God because in the eyes you don't choose what you believe you do not choose what you believe you are either convinced or you're not and you can be very convinced for good reasons or bad reasons but while I would agree that it is true that either some God exists or no God exists that those are direct logical negations the proposition is is belief in that there is a God warranted and my answer is no it's not warranted that does not mean that belief that there's not a God is warranted because that proposition may be unfalsifiable you could you could come up with a God description that there's no way to prove it's false and that means that you could not have a reasonable justification for accepting that you would basically be claiming to have falsified the unfalsifiable in much the same way that you Tim have could have essentially claimed that you have detected the undetectable if God is essentially undetectable and your method for detecting god is this unreliable thing of I have an intuition and faith then you're essentially claiming you've detected the undetectable I'm not asserting there are no gods I'm certainly not exerting asserting it with any degree of confidence or anything like that my position is that the god claim has not demonstrated and met its burden of proof the null hypothesis the thing that we start with is kind of like a foundation it's like you're innocent until proven guilty we begin by assuming you're innocent and we have to build a burden of proof to show that you are in fact guilty similarly if you view God as being accused of existing we begin that God does not exist until such time as that there's a demonstration of it and when there is then belief is warranted and if that demonstration doesn't come then we have to vote not guilty which is not a statement that God doesn't exist it's a statement that we have not demonstrated that God exists that's the difference now for some gods for some God definitions I absolutely believe they don't exist and I think I can make a great case for it including most versions of the Christian God Tim mentioned he he was reading books anybody you know some of the conspiracy theory books says you know is there books you would recommend to take him down a path of some of these things that you would recommend and Tim would you read them or or if we send them to you off air either way if we don't come up on the spot we would you actually read them the the first the first two books that I recommend to everybody even even you know when they develop a more specific interest there are other books to go to but the first two books I always recommend one book is a book called in numeracy by John Allen Paulo so it has nothing to do with religion or that much about philosophy it's about how bad we are at math and how prone we are to misunderstanding statistics and it is a good starter book to kind of retrain your brain to be suspicious when you hear statistics and numbers like oh the odds of RNA producing or evolving out of nothing are one to the tenth of bla bla bla bla bla and and it allows people it's called a numeracy the authors john allen pause it's one of the the best life-changing books ever seen a read it reminds me a lot of how much my life was changed by like James Burke and connections and the day the universe changed even more than cosmo's the one book on religion that I tend to recommend to everybody because I think it's it's really good there's one problem chapter in it but guy P Harrison who is the author and and I spoke about it and he understood why I objected but guy P Harrison has a book called 50 reasons people give for believing in a god and each one's just a short little essay we're set that you present a reason and then guy offers his thoughts on it it's really good it's accessible to anybody and it will help people narrow down their focus on where they want to go further you know do you need to go read The God Delusion or are you more focused on the science stuff and then you you go to Jerry coins you know why evolution is true and then you but if you're not as big on books there are countless you know video sources not only my own atheist debates project where I go through stuff but there's great like the William Lane Craig versus Sean Carroll debate is really good because you have an actual physicist pointing out that Bill Craig is not a physicist and then that he's misusing a model there's lots of great resources out there but the key thing is is to start training critical thinking skills and skepticism to to get a foundation behind logical fallacies and syllogisms and why we need those structures because a lot of people think that if an argument is fallacious that means the conclusion is false and that's not the case what it means is if an argument is fallacious that you cannot be confident that conclusion is true however if an argument is not fallacious if it has a proper structure if you accept the premises you have to accept the conclusion and when you come into conflict with that you get into like sorry for the the technical terms but a reductio ad absurdum where you're like wait a minute I don't accept this conclusion that must mean that one of my premises is wrong so if you begin with God exists as a premise and it leads you to a conclusion that contradicts some observation then that you know if the conclusion is true then one of the premises is wrong and it may be that this one about God existing but those are the two books I tend to recommend well I appreciate you guys having me on the trip and I'll just make one final statement and I'll go OK the way I can just summarize it is it's like I've been invited to a party and I'm in the the person that threw the party I'm in their house it's a beautiful house and I feel that if I don't at least acknowledge the person that invited me to the party it's a disservice and for me to say and to conclude I just could not conclude because there is as we already said there's no way to prove it or disprove it so I guess I leaned on the side I believing there is a God because if God exists and I'm a creature of God then in the end the truth will be revealed and I'd rather live my life at least being thankful that I was invited to the party and with that so something let me let me let me give you one question to think about Tim if you're there are you there I'm here okay what if you think you're at a party but you're actually just standing out on the street with everybody else and nobody invited you there how do you prove that you are at a party and were invited to the party not not just that you feel you were invited to a party because what you're describing is as if you were invited to the party of life and as far as I can tell the universe is entirely indifferent about us I wasn't invited to this party of life I'm just here on the street with everybody else and sometimes we gather together in clusters and have fun but that doesn't mean it was a structured invited party and so finding is good I think that this goes back to the origin of how you're feeling about it thinking about it and how I feel about it even though it does get to the fact that we feel differently about it but here's the thing there should be a way to demonstrate that we are at a party that we were invited to if I've ever been actually invited to a party I have the invitation and everybody else at the party says hey isn't this a good party and we all have invitations so there's a way to demonstrate whether or not you are invited to a party and if you can't demonstrate that maybe you weren't and I believe that it is demonstrative of the fact that we're here that we exist that we have a conscious mind that we you know going through we haven't even gotten into the whole evolution that's like saying that you believe here at a party because I'm surrounded by people and we're all laughing and having a good time that doesn't mean I'm at a party the fact that those things are consistent with a party doesn't mean that it is a party I'm surrounded by a party with people that this is not my place I didn't create it I didn't create my body I didn't create my mind I didn't create in it as my parents didn't do it yeah but you're presuming that presuming that there's a who that created these things when all of the when all of the evidence points to natural processes constructed these things we are living things we are the product of our parents but we have conscious mind so do my parents that's why I have a conscious mind because I'm the descendant of creatures that had conscious minds Tim I'll leave you with this listen to your kids and the fact that they've got the fact that they got you to call it in is a huge first step the fact that you were willing to call in and you made the premise that hey my kids wanted me to come in for their amusement thinking you know that you would be ridiculed which obviously you weren't and we had a really good conversation you know I will commend you for that but I hope you continue this journey and listen to your kids your kids need to know that you are in the top 1% of people who have ever called the show as far as having a good conversation and maybe we'll meet at a later date and it if you go down this path I think your views will be very much different a year from now and I and I would love to hear from you that and if they're not we'd still love to hear from you so thanks for your call Tim I appreciate it [Applause] yeah those are the kind of conversations that I like that was a good conversation it's really frustrating people often wonder you know like when I first found my way out I was looking for the Silver Bullet argument that would put religion and superstition and you knows supernatural stuff just to bed bum we're done with that ha ha ha matt is solved and fixed the world on [ __ ] genius it turns out there's nothing at all like that because people believe for different reasons people are gonna give it up for different reasons and some people are different stages and so that that point where it was like okay we agree intuition isn't reliable and we agree that faith isn't reliable so doesn't that mean that we that or doesn't that mean that faith is not a grill I will pass the truth and the fact that couldn't get nomini yes told me a great deal about exactly where Tim was and this is the thing about religion is that religions that have survived that are incredibly popular day are the ones that don't make too many falsifiable claims and they're the ones that have built-in protective mechanisms where they are intuition only the case well I can't explain consciousness therefore God I can't explain life therefore God I can't explain the origin of the universe therefore God and if God is there is this panacea that serves as a potential explanation for anything it's frustrating to me that they don't recognize that in fact it explains nothing and it takes time yeah and and that's the thing in Tim's going down this path I remember you know my wife we were we were talking to a priest she knew nothing about religion were getting married Catholic the priest is explain the Eucharist to her and she's like you want me to eat who and drink what like that was my moment I'm not joining your cannibal right and like they actually asked her not to come back yeah like but that was my moment of doubt but from that point where I was like I believe crazy [ __ ] it took me 10 years to become an atheist yeah that transition you know it takes time it's not this I can point back to that one thing that got me doubting just like Tim's one thing where he had a conversation with this kid and it's not even a line in the sand because it can be that you you maybe stop believing this but you're not necessarily sure where you are and then I went for yeah Catholic to Christian to deist a little wick in there somewhere for a few minutes eventually two agnostic - - or Mike wait a minute I thought about it one day I'm like no I am an atheist but it took and next week you'll be a Satanist I don't know about that but you know reading some of the books watching the Atheist experience and also when like for me when I start watching this show I was like I know that you know I think these things are wrong but I couldn't articulate my arguments so I would watch this show so that I could have conversations with friends with family and have them well so because they would say things and I'm like I don't know you know and this was a great way to to have some of those conversations that's an incredibly frustrating answer to people who think they do know and it's a great answer it's the right answer quite often I you know the debate that I did two weeks ago with Braxton Hunter there was a gentleman the very first person who's done asked her question was basically very frustrated that the quote subject debate was does the Christian God exists and Brax heard Braxton's answer was yes and my answer was I don't know and and that was it wasn't the starting point my thing is is that I think that I can disprove any religion and definitely any religion that has a reliance on the concept of a soul which I did not do in that debate but I will be hitting it the next one I think you know Devine hiddenness and inconsistent revelations all there but this kid got up and was like why didn't do you answer with a dogmatic no or a maybe and I was like oh I thought I addressed this I answer with I don't know and then well atheism is is the assertion that no gods exist and I was like no words have different usages and I'm trying to explain to him the same thing that I did today and he's rolling his eyes and dancing around just given me attitude and I and I know I got I got a little pissy and I tried to explain this and I was like did you just suggest that I'm wrong about atheism and he's like yes and I'm like well you know like having a host of the show for the year and done all this I'm trying to play neither word has different usages and you're telling me I'm wrong and he's like I don't care how you define it and I was and that's when I said well then we're done let's move on why the hell are you at my event why on earth would you come to listen to me talk and then when I try to explain to you how we're viewing something differently and how I'm using it I don't care how you define it well I don't care what the rest of your [ __ ] question was because it's time to move on its but it's frustrating because I I saw this stuff again and what I recognized from him which I wish I would handle slightly differently but it's at the end of the debate and whatever was this is another protective mechanism he has in his head a very strong man II version of atheism that he thinks he can knock down and when somebody presents any other version of atheism that's incredibly frustrating way to minute Matt just said he doesn't know that means he's an agnostic not an atheist or you know whatever as if that fundamentally changes anything about the debate whether or not what label you put on me now or maybe maybe I was a true pure Huxley and agnostic where my answer is I don't know if I defended that position the entire debate then what uses it for you to get up and say well you don't qualify as an atheist under Maude definition okay I don't care how you define atheism oh now all of a sudden that takes on a different context but anyway we got a bunch of calls to get through and and not loads of time so we have Taylor in California thank you for waiting you're on with Matt and Jim Hilton or Matt Dillahunty in general hey Matt thank you guys for having me one yeah I don't need to talk about this people create the non sequitur so he has a really good show no well Steve Steve and I are not going to have a conversation around this for various reasons but I like to show this shows really cool it's not flat earthers honest I enjoy watching it well I'm a Bible believing Christian the heart and I have faith based and I was listening to what you're saying and I agree with you this great isn't always it sorts the truth okay you need inclinations right and the Bible says persuasion we're persuaded we know persuasion is a technique I I'm a I'm a magician and I can persuade people of all kinds of things con artists are very persuasive what we need is evidence not persuasion it is it is the evidence that does the persuasion okay and the God of the Bible claims in the book of Romans all right well hang on because we have known hang on if you so there's a problem with that phrasing the God of the Bible claims in the book of Romans is an assertion that you have a book and that this God is saying instead it would be better to say the book of Romans says are you going to Romans 1 9 or I'm going 119 119 sorry that's the evidence of all thinking but y'all go ahead the claim that he is he has an important church because we have known God manifest in them the believers and God showed it unto them for the invisible things from creation of the world or clearly seen being understood by the things that are made yet in the internal power of the Godhead so he's saying that we can witness him in creation yes and and do you understand that this is a fallacious assertion because it's circular the observation of nature leads to a couple of possibilities one that nature was created and to that nature evolved that it wasn't created or did not have an intelligent creator and when Romans states that for the invisible things of his nature are evident in nature that is an assertion that basically that argument is look at the trees you look at a tree and you know there's a God except that that is a fallacious argument yeah but that's what the Hebrews that's what I'm assuming you're making what I'm saying right we look at the garlic by the whole Bible meaning it she has to be the way he describes it he's a borderline personality if you will he's somebody that loves you and then two minutes later he hates you yes he gives you the core the keys to the core and you're getting the cornices if you go to a party right if you don't just go straight to work and come back I'm gonna ground you and then you get in the corner a full tank of gas that's in the buddies oh oh yeah I'm gonna be gone for a couple days so you that will give you light it's it's curious to me it's curious to me that you want to take it on the whole character the by of God is described in the Bible and then you acknowledge that the God of the Bible is described with massively different and conflicting character traits how that would be a borderline personality yeah yeah okay so your God your God is occasionally a dick and you're okay with it why not okay here's the more important question dick or not how do you know you're God's real I can see this in manifest reality like if I no no no I wouldn't know my dad I would know my dad is real when he manifests in reality by handing me the car keys if you're going to use an analogy or metaphoric analysis like that you need to have some demonstration of how you know that there is a God handing you the metaphorical car keys how do you know your God says no no when do women women hang on Taylor Taylor when and where did God say he's invisible the Bible why should I care what the Bible says that's my god the god I believe in how is that not a circular argument I don't I believe in the God of the Bible so you believe in the gut you believe in the God Taylor I'm trying to make this as easy as possible the Bible says something and you believe it because you believe that it's God saying it right I believe that the Bible equates reality when we read the Bible I don't know what the hell that means or how it's relevant to these questions let me try again you believe the Bible correct I do every bit of it every word and so if God commands something in the Bible it's morally correct absolutely not wait so God can command things in the Bible that are immoral absolutely he creates good and evil that's not what that passage that's not what that passage means I know what the passage says and I know atheists use that all the time to say that God is the creator of good and evil but if you actually study theology on every major Christian and Jewish understanding of that that is not what that passage means but okay so yeah I know lots of things you don't but here's the thing you haven't in any I'm sure I'm sure that you know lots of things that I don't - let's focus on what's relevant so you you have a particularly esoteric view of that verse and so you have a god that is that some bipolar dick who is good and evil cool all I'm concerned about is how would we go about having a reasonable demonstration that this God is is real and your answer was that you believe the Bible and when I asked why should I care what the Bible has to say your thing is because it's from God and then you would need to demonstrate why it's from God and you can't use the Bible as confirmation to that or it becomes a circular argument which is fallacious I'm not stating as fact that the Bible said I'm persuaded to believe there was the Bible the Word of God okay meaning if you could prove this couldn't be proven to me that the Bible is not the Word of God well you you have set up Taylor you you have set up the most unfalsifiable proposition of all time for your view of Christianity because the type of things that we would use to show that the Bible was perhaps not the Word of God would be to show that something the Bible said is inconsistent with the character that we would expect from God but your God can be anything good evil nice dick whatever and so there's no way to show that beyond showing a technical failure which I guess your God could be technically wrong about stuff too right you can't he cannot why I can't do they cannot lie he could not decide for you whether or not you could not decide whether Adam was gonna take the Apple did not know whether I don't look gonna take the Apple so your God doesn't know the future so how could there possibly be prophecy in the in the Bible well prophecies acquitting he knows the conclusion of what will be and what you can't you can't so he didn't know he didn't know that Adam was gonna eat the Apple but he knew that mankind was going to be sinful and fallen and that he would need to send Jesus that's bizarrely absurd they didn't know that that that dispensed over time at the so there's all kinds of things God didn't know okay you got a weak-ass god dude now how do you prove he's real well that's what I'm saying if we had an all good god that would falsify the Bible if we had an old bad god that was post upon the Bible we got a God that does both good and evil the only one so he's responsible for everything every life and every so your God is but if your God is on par if your God is on par with a coin toss then how do you distinguish randomness to say that there's a God involved randomness well your your God can do whatever you want so let's say something good happens people can credit God something bad happens people could credit God right how do we tell when God has actually been involved in something or not if he can go either way he's involved in everything okay so he was involved in animating the Apple and yet he didn't know that was gonna happen yeah so he's in he's involved in in decisions that he doesn't know about nobody gives you your allowed the opportunity doesn't know you included you personally in the image right so that means since we're short on time and because I have a guess I'm just going to put a pin in this and you have propositioned a confused non-standard self-contradictory God and you're okay with it which is how you can't show that there's a contradiction so you're right there's no way for me to disprove your God when you figure out how you could possibly prove your God give us a call back III don't know how you can hire none my god could land on heads or tails but everytime that coin lands no matter what it is I know that God was involved in that whoo good job I don't know we'll go on we've got a tangelo in Brazil thank you for waiting I am an American Christian for 34 years and I basically endorsed the exact opposite view that the u.s. in my view the existence of God is impossible the non-existence of God is impossible but before I justify that I would like to ask you follow me I want to make sure I understand you believe the God because of the impossibility of the contrary I believe that it is not possible God's not quick okay we're gonna have to define some things but you said before you demonstrated that you wanted to do what I would like to exemplify why I believe this okay well isn't that this if you're getting ready to date oh wow this is you say that you believe in God because it's impossible for God to not exist but before you explain this you want to tell us why you believe it yeah how is that different how this is it this is an incredibly interesting sticking point for me because if I say I believe that a god doesn't exist but before I tell you why let me tell you why so how about you define the terms and then just tell us why okay I believe that the in existence of God is impossible you need to define God junk designer intelligent designer of what and how intelligent creator of the universe life biodiversity everything okay so God is an intelligence that is sufficiently intelligent to create everything yeah okay and you think it is impossible that that's not true correctly yes what would what would possibly show that you were wrong if we were to show for example a natural process that accounted for the diversity of life wouldn't that then show you were wrong if you can't show I would like not to come to the cosmological argument about nothing and so on I would like to amplify to you why I believe what I believe but not with the cosmological argument I didn't mention the cosmological argument I was talking about life cosmological argument about the origin of the cosmos okay now let's go to life well I don't I don't necessarily need to go to life either you have proposed a god that is capable of everything creating anything that that actually exists and you say it's impossible for that to not be true and all I'm saying is how how do you come to the conclusion that it is impossible for it no power to do something okay stop stop first of all first of all your assertion that something cannot come from nothing is something you cannot demonstrate demonstrate yes you do you don't just get to assert it and keep going you know yes sir you don't get to say something can't come from stop okay stop stop I'm explaining why you cannot merely assert that of course you can say it I can say the moon is made of green cheese you don't get to assert that something cannot come from nothing and expect someone to accept that until you demonstrate it and you have no nothing with which to demonstrate this oh you're wrong okay where's your nothing where's your nothing where's your nothing what you you answer the questions I asked her we're moving on we're almost out of time where's the nothing that you were able to experiment with to show that something can't come from it absolutely nothing is by definition absent anything I I agree I agree that that is the definition of nothing but you know what the definition of nothing stop stop and let me finish if the definition of nothing is that it doesn't have anything then that's fine but until the definition of nothing is something cannot come from it you have work to do to prove that assertion no yes by if the definition of peanut butter is a creamy substance with chunks made of peanuts and it has to be chunky or you're a heretic you're just correct you're wrong about absolutely but if that's the definition of peanut butter you don't get to say a jelly and peanut butter sandwich can't come from peanut butter because peanut butter is defined as a creamy substance made of peanuts you only get to claim that it's true by definition if the definition of peanut butter is something from which a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cannot come by the way scientists aren't necessarily proposing something from nothing that's an actual absurdity there were actually problems with the question I asked you that I was hoping you could see if you could identify but you just kept going right down that track nothing isn't a thing and trying to define nothing as a thing is already a mistake it's like trying to talk about before time hey what happened before time nothing because happenings occurrences are temporal they require time they occur over some period of time so to say what happened before time is already nonsensical it's like saying how did peanut butter create the universe oh well you're assuming and you're assuming that there is in fact a creator when you define God is that being which is capable of creating anything you don't just good to say it's impossible for that not Beach you have to show why that is in fact necessarily true and if you can't do that for your something from nothing claim then I have no confidence that you're gonna continue on beyond that we get a call to defend creamy peanut butter and Palfrey orange juice and just rip it apart yeah oh my gosh I mean you can tell they're fake pulp free orange juice and give yourself an animal with it because there's pulp in orange juice no I'm just kidding all right let see if we can get to a couple more real quick we've got Jeff in Florida thanks for waiting I'm so glad that you guys started off with the in-group out-group saying because the type into really the main point I wanted to make actually if you might that's actually mine mentally more important than what I was going to say so you mind if I just take a second to talk about you know motivated reason reasoning and in-group out-group yeah I mean we were we're over time but you know if you if that's what you want to do and keep it short go for it well right so in-group out-group like these you guys mentioned the study and they've actually done studies about you know how motivated reasoning is it plays a huge role in in-group out-group to give you might want to define motivated reasoning for people right so they give a study to republicans and democrats and if the republicans believe the study came from another republican they they do it one way you know much much more if it's a fancy way of saying that we have internal biases right so like I actually tried calling in before and it you know was a complete disaster you guys misunderstood that you thought I was a theist and like I was calling to defend like I was calling to point out like at that argument that I thought you made and basically I said you guys thought that you know I was at theist and guys Jim wasn't here this was with Matt right ok and what was the argument well like I want to I want to take a recent example of like what I thought was a really bad argument and I think this is a an exam of like if you had the idea that the other person on the end of the call was like you know an atheist or you know agnostic didn't you like you you have a different opinion like the outcome would be different like so what I was sort of astounded with was that like the guy said the guy defined services at the is talking a guide to find naturalism as all that exists is study of all by the Natural Sciences and in my view like that's like I know a lot about meta meta meta a lot methodological naturals and versus philosophical naturals and you know I've I followed the Dover intelligent design trial very closely so like I mean to me that's completely natural definition like but you you sort of interrupted and said like well that's the same as methodological naturalism but the I mean you said he was completing methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism but and then you said only you gave a definition of only natural things exist which is sort of like we have to stop we have we have to stop Jeff I don't remember the details of this call I have no confidence that you're getting it right I have no way to assess it without actually listening to the call instead of trying to replay a call in your head and tell me what went wrong just see if we agree or disagree on a thing because is it possible that I misspoke sure is it possible that you misunderstood sure but oh here's a call where you said this and he kind of said this and I think you got that does nobody any good okay so this is what why I think it's important like you were defining naturalism in a way that sort of excluded like most basically what you did was you've made why are we still talking about what I did when I specifically said let's stop talking about what I did and see if we can agree okay let me let me make this easy let me make this easy natch is a word that is used and tossed around and yet there are multiple different usages of it there is the notion of philosophical naturalism which is basically an assertion that only the natural world exists and then there's methodological naturalism which is Sciences recognition that we cannot investigate and confirm the supernatural so we don't get deposit supernatural explanations it is not claiming there's nothing supernatural it's saying we're not going to include potential supernatural events until such time as we have a way to actually include them methodologically to show that there's something supernatural and that's when it gets involved with science that's it that's the difference between philosophical and methodological naturalism what did I get wrong the reason the reason it's important to get this right is like you said that now what did I get wrong what did I get wrong just then okay what did you get wrong just then just now and what I just said that's the most important thing right I thought the well I thought the important thing was correcting the record but no okay you're not listening to me I said it's a waste of time for us to go through what you think I said in a call versus what I'm not going to remember about what I said in a call because I don't have the call here to review but let's see if we can figure out if we agree so I gave you definitions so that I can figure out if we're in agreement then you can send me an email with a specific show in the time stamp and I can go back and look and say yep I [ __ ] that up and offer a correction or I can go back and say nope this caller completely misunderstood what I was saying or there's a third option with something else so all I want to know is did is what I just explained to you about naturalism in agreement with your understanding more or less but with caveats are the caveats relevant yes they are because you know what are they real quickly like what are the basic basic ontology that conflicts with what what I take to be your ontology not just from the last call but before is that I mean I don't care about the last call in the before this is the thing and let me if you get nothing else from today's show apart from the fact that there's an American atheist convention an atheist day and Jim's awesome and all this other stuff get this memory is faulty human beings are faulty if you think you found an error in the show you may in fact be right I've made tons of errors in the 14 years that I've hosted this show but if you want me to go back and actually correct an error then the best thing to do just like when you're having a debate is start by defining terms and so if I give an explanation and I say is that correct and you're like more or less with caveats and then we start to ask about the caveats and you start talking about my understanding of your ontology from past calls you are no longer a relevant part of this conversation because you cannot stay on topic there is a method by which we can go about to figure out whether or not a mistakes been made and something that might correct somebody and it doesn't me and ER overall the landscape of all of your suspicions about what you thought about what I said in the past it's let's start now to find this and if we agree you can say I think if you go back and listen this episode you'll find that you did not present this in the same way and it has problems and I will say cool I'll go back and look at that episode and figure out what the actual case is but if you're just gonna keep going on with this trail of suspicions about based on your memory and your understanding of me you are [ __ ] up big time and I would be [ __ ] up doing the same thing this is why I constantly remind people don't go out and claim that you can tell what somebody's motivations are unless you're really solid and can make a case for it because what matters is not their mo the religious right would just want to punish women for having sex well there may be people on the religious right that do want to punish women for having sex but that doesn't mean it's the motivation and what you should say oh well the religious right just want to make women slaves to their biology well I can tell you that when I was a part of the Religious Right that never entered my mind I never said you know what I want to make women slaves to their biology but if instead you said the religious right is wanting to enact legislation that has the effect of making women slaves to their biology now you're talking about the facts you were talking about what they did and what the consequences are and that's had enough and it's something that makes it impossible for the new defend yeah well they can say well that wasn't my intention okay great I'm glad you're not as shitty as you could have been but you're still doing something that is potentially shitty and here's this that's how you get people to recognize but as soon as you tell somebody what their motivations are if you're wrong you've screwed up and they don't have to listen to anything else you say it's like when when somebody tells me oh you're not really an atheist you know God exists well I am aware that I in fact do not know that God exists which means now that person has zero credibility for anything that they're going to say related to this because I know it stems from the fruit of a poisonous tree and what you call in to say hey I think you got something wrong cool let's discuss the subject figure out what we agree and don't agree on and then if once we've done that I can go back and look but if you're claiming that he was even claiming this is what you meant he was claiming this is what I think and I understood that you meant based on my memory of this call and this other call I don't care I care about the facts not your impression of an interpretation of a memory of what you heard and it's a waste of time on the show for us to sit here and talk about a call from however long ago going around in circles about your interpretation of your memory of that call there's a good way to solve these things and there's a crappy way and we just wasted five minutes on a crappy way on that no we got two calls left I'm gonna try to get to you got a preference first one bug in Texas thanks for waiting you're on with Jim Hilton and Matt Dillahunty on occasion yeah you're here oh wow okay okay I've been listening to the show for a long time now I'm 28 and I'm 28 now but I've been heaven I've had doubts about religion in general since I was 19 so let me speed up okay so my dad was a Muslim my mom was a Christian I was in prison for 13 years he was a Muslim before you got in prison so he didn't just become a Muslim because of prison and my mom is the Evangelist I said there was a preacher I played the drums in church I've done the whole flight go to church like three four times do we think all that yep what I wanted to talk to you about and ask you dealing with religion and I see you guys house on your show every week and the people they call and I see the guys they're gonna argue I see I see what makes this easy for you because all I see is people arguing from emotion and wanting there to be something magical there because if there's not that this means that life is sometimes and you have to figure out a way to make it better yourself like it's like it's like it's more convenient feeling that there is some kind of magical Nisour something more going on and when I almost had a car wreck and I didn't die in that car wreck so it's easy for me to make that a reason for me to believe it I suspect that you are correct that this is quite often the case but it's very difficult to prove but yes that's it I would say that's a fairly accurate assessment of some I don't know I think Jim's on board with that let me get some more of those points I'm kind of rambling okay the reason why I want to talk to you so bad is because you speak really I'm piously and I feed it a lot of times you will even find yourself defending the the Christians and I'm like and that's what actually got me way back when I was like 18 I've been like watching this dope what got me was when you were arguing with them you could easily tell they were arguing from emotion and just wanting to counter what you're saying instead of listen to what you're saying and you were actually helping them give a better argument than what they could have gave from the start and when I saw that I'm saying he legitimately wants an actual answer he doesn't just want something that gives him a warm fuzzy and and and in me growing up in the South I'm from I'm from originally from Arkansas but I move to Texas from Mississippi because I live the mystical part of my like world basically Mississippi so uh I know what you mean about the best is Santa's church and the Bible Belt and all that type of stuff and the problem and I it's not like I'm precise if I study anything but I'm blessed if you ever see that place so black people are oh my gosh I thought I thought it disconnected and I was like somebody's gonna pull that clip out dude says he's black and host hang up on him [Music] the phone with quite a second we're gonna go ahead bug when people callin City show and you're countering with them it's so easy because you legitimately want a real answer and those people aren't saying that they disagree with you because what you say it doesn't make sense they disagree with it because if they agree then they know that they don't make sense in their head then they're not in it yes oh it's like is it all just emotions and us being so arrogant is smart that we don't have a [ __ ] answer we have to just make one and God can just be plugged in anywhere is that all it is go ahead Jim arrogant I don't I don't I don't think that's all it is I don't think there's any simple here's the one answer for why we have these ideas I think it I think religions have built themselves up to offer comfort or the illusion of comfort to get rid of some of the things that we're afraid of or ease those fears while also instilling new fears and providing the one and only solution is it emotional yes is it personal yes but I know plenty of incredibly intelligent theists who think that they have rock-solid science-based arguments for God when you point out the problems with those they don't always retreat back to emotion or faith although some of them do some of them just have whatever intellectual roadblock that makes them say no no this must be the more probable answer like the guy was excuse me the guy was talking with last night on a podcast was arguing or the improbability of something and I gave him an example that demonstrated that things weren't as improbable as he thought this you know coin flipping thing which I know I've talked about before the show I think I talked about oh yeah okay so the coin toss thing and that was a good example that kind of stalled that now where's he gonna go from there well I don't know and when we're talking about people making arguments from probability the question I keep asking is how did you determine how probable god is as an explanation if my house is on fire and we make a list of potential causes you know I left a gas can in the garage in Texas don't do that you know all right I had some faulty wiring some somebody intentionally set it you know whatever you make a list of all these and you calculate the probability and how you know the probability is based on past experience how many houses have got fired because of this and what signs what we look for for that if it was wiring how do we find the origin but let's see we have the best let's say we have the best fire investigator and he comes into my house and he goes yep there's the point of origin right there here's all the science shows it and it's this point of origin and it's directly behind that outlet so I'm gonna conclude that the most reasonable explanation is that there was a wiring fault right there and that started the fire somebody else could say nope God started a fire directly behind that outlet and I think that's more probable because I believe that God exists and God can do anything and electrical circuits can't do anything or can't do everything and so that makes it a much more probable explanation and if you use flawed reasoning like that somebody's gonna go yeah yeah now we don't tend to do that for fires because we have a better understanding for fires than we do for the diversity of life in the origin of the universe and what happens after you die and so people stick God into those gaps in our knowledge we have to be careful making the claim that all people think this of emotion because we don't know what all people think they come at this from very different perspectives do a lot of people like you said come out this motion yes a lot to do they do they insert God when it when they don't know yes a lot of people do those things but like matt said a lot of people some people come at this intellectually and and they truly believe or or think these things but that doesn't make them jive debated Blake Blake tons of like five or six times and we're friendly but over the house I like Blake I don't think he's doing it primarily from emotion I won't say that emotion doesn't play a part in it because I wouldn't say that emotion doesn't play a part into my views of course it does we're emotional creatures it's just when you you should strive to take the most unbiased approach you can and in in in Blake's case he's really fond of Bayes theorem for analysis and another video I'm gonna be doing in the near future is why based there and doesn't have any application in the question of gods or supernatural or or single occurrence events okay well real quick like I just wanna the reasonable I guess I'm coming I based it off on my personal experience so I say motion because this from my experience would lead me to even question in the first place and really not fear hill of feel but you're burning a lake of fire for eternity or whatever they're gonna do if it does is true what really killed me from being scared of it and really not caring anymore because I grew up watching my mom's life and my mom she's an evangelist and that's why this username over whatever this specific name is my mom had a really hard life and I've only been basically with her most at the time because I still there there was a preacher he was cheated anyway and uh real dad we had a relationship over the phone and three letters but I never made my first time meeting him in real life was at his funeral so I never ever meant to met him I can't realize what we got back to talk but what uh made me not give a [ __ ] any of God or not is when you hear people talk about there being a plan and there being a reason for everything yeah it sounds like the most laziest easiest [ __ ] I've ever heard because if it's all a part of a plan and this is all some kind of like watching something in motion they everything happened for a reason my mom is like sixty now and I know there are things that she's wishy always had I want to give to an ice know I've lived no no my whole life my whole life crying something like my mom wakes up cities day now 6 o'clock a.m. and prays every single morning you no matter what deity is period-specific this clock and she prays and she's seeking songs and she crushed and she she really believes on it in her heart and that hurt me there's kind of like my father have like because I'm fine now I live in Arlington Texas now I have a pretty good job I'm not selling for money or anything i play xbox live every day I have friends like life is fine but that was God's plans right yeah [ __ ] you guys that's the thing this this whole notion of a plan is bizarre yeah oh my plan for your family is for you to have four miscarriages then then have a kid that survives only to die at the age of two because that will make you stronger and I need more little you know toddlers up in heaven my plan for you is for you to be you know amazing but absolutely my cancer right now my sister just got diagnosed with cancer about three or four months ago and it was phase two and they found out about it in when she know I'm lying it was Stage one when they found out about it and it's in it's a little personal but it's in the fresh so it spreads faster and like the Ducks so it went from a stage one to like a space 3 super fast and she has to go through chemo to get the surgery so they can't just cut it out so she's like lost all her hair now I suppose she's all really depressed and I'm just like you know what it's a [ __ ] plan it's like like oh my and then I have my niece I have my nephew - he stays with me now using on my couch right now my mom is back home but she's gonna have to end up moving here because we don't have anybody to watch the kids play anyway anyway long story short people coming up to other people and saying that it sounds a part of a plan it's just basically saying I don't we don't really have an answer for it yeah yeah you know you know I'm sorry you're hurting it I don't know what to say but if I can put a positive spin on it again and say that if this was God's plan God's kind of a [ __ ] yeah yeah it's for people listening other Christians I was a fiction a long time I didn't curse I was probably the most concert Christian like that you ever met I bet I was really the print at that time because I really didn't I wanted to I wanted a reasoning for why things are being bad when I realized you have to make your life and make things better for you you control that you control your work ethic whether you get up a night in the morning if you believe in God I tell you what don't sit in job applications just pray about it don't put in any job application just braid it if somebody calls you to give you a job and even if you do get a job doesn't prove that a god gutter for you right yeah I'll let you go bug without one more call gotta try to get to before we close this out but yeah thank you last one I'm looking forward to it's about kids yeah that's what that's why I want to make sure we got to it one thing about this whole you know plan thing is that it's one time at an event somebody asked me well which which model the Christian model or the atheist model is more appealing or more comforting and I was like what doesn't matter because I care about which one's true not which one's more appealing but if you want to know the truth I find this one far more appealing and it's like if you believe in karma if you believe that God has a plan then when bad things happen to you it's because you deserved it or you needed it and now in my life when bad things happen it's because the universe doesn't give a [ __ ] about me and it's up to me to make sure that I'm taking care of me that was as straight forward as we get is it each of each oh and Georgia iha you're on with Matt and Jim and we're let Jim finish out the show with an answer to your question or issue thank you hi Jim hi Matt I've been listening to the show since recently ie I want to give you a little bit of a background of myself I'm from Honduras originally and I moved to the States a year and a half ago but welcome glad you're glad you made it past that wall yeah we're in investors visa and I come from a very religious country and a very religious society but fortunately unlike many of the colors I've heard my family was not religious and I it was never an obligation in my family to be religious right so I've been an atheist for since I can remember maybe since I was 12 or 13 that I I thought that things just didn't add up and it wasn't logical and my mind functions in a logical way there's a holder yes I've met there eight and they're twins and I moved to Georgia and they are starting to ask about math and church I was like eight-year-olds asking about math good for them mass maybe not so good my other kids go to Mass and why they don't it's very hard for me to explain it to them because they're still in school and they're eight but they're twins and it's the exact age that they start to tell people about what they know and what they believe and and the thing I'm most afraid of is that since I live in a community where people do go to church that they will be alienated within the community this is a big deal i'ma let Jim address you know I think you should tell your kids the truth they can handle the truth and and how you choose to go about that and and how your kids choose and I would honestly say what they choose to do it should be their choice as long as you as a parent let them be aware of the consequences of their actions I had this conversation with my son in grade school when he was in grade school he wore a shirt to school that said we'll convert for evidence in grade school we let him know the consequences of his actions that you know teachers could look at him different kids could do this he was like I am NOT going to hide you know he has he has handled it very well my daughter at the time chose not to be up front Hey not to talk and it was her choice and that's perfectly acceptable as well yes ain't come full circle now that she's 14 she's speaking all the country has an open atheist meaning I try not to protect my kids I let them know the consequences of their actions you should tell them the truth and let them know hey if you talk about these things here could be the reaction there are some friends that you may not be allowed to play with at some point and they did but at the same time when we moved to our subdivision and they came out and said I'm an atheist people are like I'm so glad you're an atheist we thought we were the only one and they were like there's five atheists on this street you've been playing with each other for six years and no one knew cuz no one would say anything yeah it's one of those things where that's how I feel like I'm I'm still in the closet in some way not with my family but but with society and well there was a there was a slight assumption here that that your kids were non-believers as well we didn't actually discuss the big thing is is if if they're curious about why you don't go to church well Jim saying is true you can be honest with your kids about what you believe and you can just explain there are some people who believe these things and they participate in these activities and I don't share that belief and that's why I don't you're gonna have to you know study this and make up your own mind at some point because I don't want to do what other parents are doing which is saying because I'm Catholic my kids are Catholic or because I'm Jewish my kids are Jewish or because I'm a Hindu my kids are Hindu instead I don't believe any of that I would like for you to go out and explore and if you doubt that I'm wrong and you have good reason for it come back and tell me and if you wind up agreeing with me that's great but I love you you're my kids and just be aware as Jim was pointing out that yeah what you do and say about all this is gonna have consequences it's one of the reasons why I have such a problem with the Boy Scouts is that not only do they end up benefiting from public funds but they march into a school and they have access to these kids and hype it all up as if it's fun and some of these kids join and what if your best friend joins the Cub Scouts and you can't because Cub Scouts want to allow atheists to join though Boy Scouts will now allow girls because the Girl Scouts were awesome and outshining the Boy Scouts at every turn and hopefully I'm optimistic that again evasion okay eventually the Boy Scouts will also allow atheists and then we can have scouting without having to create scouting for all and all these other secondary organizations but yeah my you know I don't have kids but love your kids talk to your kids be honest with them be supportive of them realize that you know you you were imperfect and flawed and so are they and you probably screwed them up because that's what every parent does a little bit and you know when but when the bad things happen when they lose a friend because there's a disagreement about religion talking to them about how to handle it and whether or not that friendship is worth making an effort to salvage or whether it's just one of those things where some people aren't going to agree and that's going to be sad but wouldn't you rather be you're surrounded with and have friends who are going to accept you for who you are and not expect you to change to adopt their beliefs okay yeah that sounds like something that makes sense it's something we should tell to adults too with regard to family Jen people's has been saying for years that your your family if you act like family and that the blood relationship has nothing to do with it I have people who I'm not blood related to in any glow sense apart from are all humans who are far more family to me than members of my immediate family are and I'm okay with that yes it makes me sad I've lost friends I've lost family members and relationships that I won't reconnect with but if if the loss was because they were expecting me to be what they wanted me to be I'm better off without him but I think it's a bad message send your kids to be afraid of who you are right you know let them know tell them the truth have these honest conversations and again let them know the consequences of their actions and they will decide if it's appropriate do they want to tell people they're an atheist or do they want to tell people they're not religious or do they just want to play and not even address it and walk away I'd rather not talk about it yeah it's none of your business it's between me and whatever god I do or don't believe it but but letting your kids make those decisions and having those conversations I have some of the best conversations with my kids as they were growing up talking about these things when they would come back to school and how they handled it and did it go well and was it no big deal or was it a big deal and what were they gonna do about it like it's it's a good don't be afraid of the conversation with your kids it should be you should be excited to have these conversation it's also worth pointing out that if your kids are also non-believers that you can do that wrong that if you're if you're the atheist marching into to school to tell all of your little friends how stupid they are for believing in you know fairy tales like god you're probably making a big mistake yeah on that note I check I got to let you go because we're way over time I want to thank you for your call thank you and thank you for taking your time absolutely we're glad that it touch on that subject well thank you Jim for coming I think so all the people who are down here to see the show you can stream this South by Southwest weekend or week here in Austin but most importantly for me personally the people on the other side of that wall who screen the calls make the show happen and do all this stuff so that we can talk and have a good time ACA is a non-profit educational organization supported by volunteers by people on patreon we are here at the freethought library which is open 7 days a week from 11:00 to 9:00 and there's something going on all the time if you don't have a community like this in your area and this is a community and you are welcomed and wanted here why haven't you started building one you don't have to build up nine television shows the way we have you don't have to build up any TV shows or podcasts or anything at all but if you're out there and you find that you don't have a community then reach out to the ACA and other communities because there are lessons we have learned that might be beneficial to people but at a minimum go out and do something because we need as many out atheists as we can to normalize this to make the activism easier to make people realize they're not alone and while they might have to sit in a corner at Christmas as the ostracized person their family after everybody else goes to bed they can head out and come have a drink with some like-minded people and realize that it's those people who have the problem and not them we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] [Music] when when I had I saw the caller number six and I was like yeah I'm gonna let

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 100,694

Rating: 4.8570118 out of 5

Keywords: TheAtheistExperience, Atheist Experience, atheist, experience, atheism, religion, religious, faith, belief, secular, science, reason, rational, proof, evidence, logic, fallacy, Matt Dillahunty, argument, God, Jim Helton

Id: dSGzLoWWQJQ

Length: 124min 29sec (7469 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/1389t1389]

I'd never seen this show before: it's amazing. Thanks for posting this! I'm definitely going to watch more.

[u/Stupid_question_bot]

Oh it’s you.

I guess no surprise you are on this sub too.. great video thanks for linking it.

[u/kangakomet]

I really enjoyed this chat, really made me recall all the reasons I love this show. Oftentimes I find Matt too abrasive and quick to judgement, which understandable given the length of times answering what usually falls into the same old same old, but this was Matt at his best

[u/Beanz122]

I was watching this episode in person at the studio!