Atheist Experience 23.34 with Matt Dillahunty & Don Baker

[Music] [Music] there's people here and hey everybody welcome to the Atheist experience we are alive today is Sunday August 18th 2019 unless it's not but we are one month away from the ACS annual bat cruise and while everything isn't finalized I can't say that there was some work done on the website so if you had gone on and tried to buy your tickets for the back cruise already and encountered an error related to registration or web I think we've got that sorted and there's a if you go to atheist - community or go up on the main page there's a link there to the back cruise which would take you right to the the internal shop and it's worth noting that the backers is like the first of the the events there and there's a picture of like the Packers and then there's an Add to Cart button if you only need one ticket go ahead and click Add to Cart and and if you decide later you want more you can go over to the cart and manipulate but if you need several tickets click on the actual picture and then you can pick out you know the number there and they don't have to fill in your name and contact information and stuff so that we know who bought a ticket because that would be nice but and you will not be mailed a ticket you'll will just check you off yes you come come in the boat you just you just arrived show up we'll have a checklist and yeah I think we're probably right out half sold at this moment so we're going to take warm one month I got mine ticket yesterday while I was testing the website but yeah we're a month off from that also a special note of thanks to Joe pankrac and I apologize if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly for a donation that's going to make sure everybody here at the building gets ice cream tonight so yeah yeah we do the show our ways to this show years ago the public access theatre and here in Austin and we were on local public-access TV now it's internet-only and we do it from the Atheist community of Austin's freethought library 15:07 West Canaan Glen any eighth history at these friendly persons welcome to come down here the building's open 7 days a week pretty much from 11:00 to 9:00 there's always something going on I know there's philosophy club meetups on Wednesdays we're recording tons of shows or secular sexuality and atheist band garden talk even an atheist experience and and did well pretty much almost one for every coffee mug in this shot right now there are a couple expert coffee yeah and it's weird because my my named bottle of coke zero is on your side and oh and yours is on my side oh that way we could be closer together without having a slide in front of the screen yeah how are you doing I'm all right I had some great barbecue today so I'm ready for a nap I don't think I announced you at all I I'm Matt in case you didn't know that this is Don Baker Hey good to be here that great barbecue we're at a neighbor's house a neighbor throws a they call brisket off which is a competition of sorts and there's tons and tons of good food and it's a and basically there's bragging yeah it's not like you know hey here's a cool restaurant you guys can go to I had barbecue that none of you can ever get yeah good job I made some great beans awesome yeah so in addition to the backers coming up there's a bunch of other stuff on on my schedule which is fairly hectic I have a debate Tuesday night it's online so it's not anything you can go to but you can tune in I'll be debating a Jay Dyer on the existence of God and I think he's gonna be presenting some kind of transcendental organ everywhere it'll be posted eventually on the atheist debates project once it's done we try to do this a week or so ago and ran into technical difficulties but we're hoping to do that again next Sunday and actually mark did we make a decision about shifting show time you can answer in a minute but next Sunday is special because an idol from religion foundation is coming down and giving a talk talking about his book he's gonna be guesting on on several of the shows but I also have a debate here in Austin at the AT&T amphitheater conference center thing on campus at 6:00 p.m. and so for those of you who are aware this show runs from 4:30 to sometime after 6:00 is when we stop so either I'm not going to do the show next week and I'll be over prepping and doing the debate or there's a chance that we will air atheist experience early like directly after sake that and get that done I don't think we completely made up our mind on that so stay tuned and be ready to call in even earlier if that's the case but yeah this debate is it's something I so I work with the Bible and beer consortium and I've done a bunch of debates with her ezra the nobody's official title is president executive hm fic whatever he's a friend of mine and I've done a number of debates with them normally in Dallas and they're branching out to include Austin and this will be the first major Bible and beer consortium debate and the debate topic is how do you resolve the conflict between religious liberties and LGBT rights now for clarity and I will say this again when the debate actually happens we are not debating rights or what rights people have this is about how do you've got this group of people who think that they get to be bigots because of their religious beliefs and this group of people who are like yeah your religious liberties lose every time when it comes to what my actual rights are this is it gets down to separation of church and state and a bunch of other stuff so this isn't gonna be a debate about whether or not somebody is a person or whether they have rights or anything else it's from my view it's gonna be an education about Church a separation and trying to let people know that you know if your religion is against X okay you don't have to do it but that doesn't mean you have any right to dictate to what anybody else sure but I'm looking forward to some interesting discussion about that and that debate too will be up on my atheist debates thing and the last thing is I'm going to DragonCon which is the end of the month Labor Day weekend I think it's Labor Day weekend and I'll be doing magic and skepticism a couple panels I'm working with Kurt Anderson Jamie and Swiss and most of the people on the skeptics track so if you're in the Atlanta area or if you're going to Dragon Con I know there's gonna be like 90,000 people there but if you happen to see like a bald head from the back and you suspect that it's me hey don't touch that person and then when you find out it is me then you can hug me shake my hand whatever I don't want people getting assaulted because oh I thought you were mad no so yeah that's that's pretty much everything that's going on we'll have more information about the bat cruise and we'll make some decisions about what's going on with next week's shows and we'll get them publicized as well how are you I'm all right you just got back from vacation II I took a almost two weeks in in Europe Wow and it was awesome except I had my wallet stolen Oh no there's no fun got pickpocketed so now you gotta get like new license new credit cards yeah that was all that's that's a minor thing relative to not having not having money right when you're abroad yeah anyway I had to call friend and friend helped me out so we're good cool I'm guessing that you as a topic for today might have something that we would refer to as a failure yeah another failure you know I had talked about miracles before and and there's been a lot of calls about miracles lately and we actually had a last time I was on I had a call from a guy who was promoting some sort of probabilistic argument for the resurrection and ultimately he was referring to a paper that was about miracles and he sent that to me and so part of part of today's topic is kind of a refutation of at least part of that paper there's it's one of those fractally wrong things it sort of like wrong everywhere but but this is certainly something that is separable from the paper itself and cool this is show number 65 if you're keeping track some people it's failure number 63 you're number 65 it's show number ten million twenty fourth twenty third season and editor wire other yeah okay so some people believe that miracles are evidence of God and I want to explain why that's not the case today and some people think that multiple miracles are even more convincing evidence of God and they're not so that's that's kind of the gist of the show a miracle might be defined as a specific event that would not have happened if only the natural order had been operating this is from that paper by the way and that's you know a reasonable working definition but these things are truly rare and truly unexplained and truly not reproducible you know can I jump in yes please do so that operating definition go through it one more time a miracle might be defined as a specific event that would not have happened if only the natural order had been operating sure so what caught me is that you said these things are rare now I would say they're so rare that they're non-existent because is there ever a demonstration that the national natural order wasn't working the fact that something happens that you don't understand doesn't mean the natural order was not work at that's right in fact one of my lines here is I know that I know no case where the natural laws have been how would you even prove that well I I know of none right so no but I mean how would they prove it how would they prove oh hey here's a case where the natural order wasn't working yeah okay cool if you know of a case where the natural order wasn't working that would fit this book please call in and tell us not only what it was but how you know that the natural order wasn't working but what is really going on here is that what what we're getting are stories about events right and the lists and the listener has no way of knowing what actually happened and and the listener being us and so we and there's a sort of an implied argument from ignorance here that if you can't explain this miracle God must have done it yep there that seems to be the kind of the way things that work and unfortunately the same reasoning I'll put that and scare quotes works with the invisible pink unicorns and magics farting sky Pixies or whatever you know crazy thing you want to have is responsible for this so I have a better definition which I think is I encourage folks to you know kick the tires and see if it's any good it's an unconfirmed or unconfirmed story about a mysterious event that is used to market God I see now that that though see you gun guys this is me just being pedantic okay but that can't be the definition of a miracle that kept that your new definition can't be a miracle is a story about something but because the story is not the miracle it's a matter of fact stories about things that people think are miraculous are anything but miraculous their mundane they have been right all the time right so okay well you got me there but this definition fits a wide variety of religious claimed miracles and I invite the audience to send me counter examples I want to explore this definition a little bit today yes you can calling about something that's a miracle that is not just a story that you don't have an explanation for but some evidence for something and how you determined that it was miraculous I don't be a one way to do it another misunderstood yeah but we're gonna we're gonna hit some different angles here let's see and as you said the miracles abound right and so one of the key issues here is unconfirmed and something that is truly unconcerned about evidence of anything it's just a mystery and and at worst it's a con so it's it's really sort of something that's unexplained and and doesn't doesn't act as an explanation for God doesn't provide evidence for anything and there is also the category of confirmable but unconfirmed meaning that with some investigation you could find out more and in some cases the information is intentionally hidden by people who are doing the marketing and in some cases it's just because the people listening to the story are lazy and they don't they don't go and explore it so unconfirmed can be a lot of different things here and let's come up with a couple examples so hidden information or laziness examples well Mary in the Bible was a virgin due to a mistranslation that became ossified Dogma pretty sure she was a virgin because that's the way she was born except that virginity is a social construct that's absolute bullshit so but go ahead well she the original story was she's a young woman who bore a child and and it and because of a copying error she became a virgin who who bore a child and the religious dogma ossified around this and and this is sort of a well known problem except if sorry what so I'm just gonna keep interrupting you all these do i I'm not convinced it's a copy here I matter of fact I think claiming that it is is a bit problematic because we're we mostly get that is in the book of Matthew and Matthew is desperate to have Jesus fulfill as many prophetic things as he can dream up or imagine and so you've got the passage in Isaiah where there's a a possible translation error where something that was originally young woman was translated as virgin and then it's not that it's not the copy error that you're talking about the Matthew then kind of lifted yeah you have to do a virgin okay I thought you were to about a copy here in Matthew I'm not it could be a copier at least we can't show that it's not okay sorry okay but how much more likely is it a copy error versus an actual miraculous virgin birth well that's the problem because no no because this is why I asked this if the copy error is in Isaiah then the real question is how likely is it that it's a copier of error versus Isaiah was speaking about a virgin because Isaiah doesn't speak about a virgin birth in that sense so see this you're kind of conflating what happens in Isaiah in Matthew but okay I got some more I'm just trying to stem off the the the first-year bible college students who are like hang on a minute could be this here yeah yeah you're right though when it comes down to is it more likely that somebody made something up there was a translation error there was an attempt to fulfill prophecy or an actual virgin woman gave birth to a divine child yeah we know which one of those is more likely right okay I happen to be a little bit of an expert on the Guadalupe and Juan Diego a mythology armchair expert how about that and we know for a fact that the one diego's cloak was was a painting it was done around 1550 and it was based on Spanish imagery that that came over from from Spain and I've done some research on that and the cloak is a basis for a big money-making scheme today in the eighteen in 1888 the cloak was repainted and there was a miracle it was a miracle that the cloak hadn't degraded since the original imagine that okay you have a you you replace one painting with another painting and the new painting is undegraded isn't that a miracle it's another miracle that they remove the crown off of her head between the two so way there was one painting and somebody made a new painting and the new painting is different and they're claiming that it hasn't that it didn't degrade okay well I miss I'm gay I'm not giving you the whole story the whole story the the the original miracle claim was that juan diego wore this cloak and gathered up roses that had bloomed in december when they weren't supposed to bloom and gathered them up and showed them to a bishop and as he refuses this this image appeared on his cloak that's that's the that's the mythology around it but but it but it's really a painting and then and there probably wasn't even a juan diego okay this cloak was made of a cactus fiber that was supposed to have decayed over the over the centuries but it but it hasn't decayed and and and it's claimed to be a miracle that it hasn't decayed okay so okay and then it was also a miracle the crown disappeared from this cloak the crown on Mary's head wouldn't that be decay solved it next on unsolved mysteries so so the gist of it is is is that this this whole Juan Diego thing is pretty much a scam and pretty much um you know money-making mechanism for the Catholic Church and and and this it's full of holes as far as all their miracle claims there's even a miracle claim that some ophthalmologist looked at looked at the eyes of the image okay ophthalmologist eyes of the image okay yes you should be scratching your head by now and found that that the the image that he saw in those eyes was of the bishop that supposedly as if it were like a photograph anyway it's truly truly hilarious no wait so there's a painting that has eyes painting that has eyes and an ophthalmologist looked at it yes and determined that those were the eyes of somebody else know that the eyes themselves had a reflection in them of what of this miraculous event whether the cloak being revealed to juan diego effectively so so basically the ophthalmologist had watched so much CSI where was like zoom in and enhance this sector catholic but he saw there was an image reflected in the eyes according to him right okay so he's in his brain doing the isolate sector one and zoom in and enhance yes thing that yes yeah yeah that's bullshit okay and when you zoom enough you get you get a lot of white noise yeah and it looks a lot like a miraculous vision yeah okay another a Catholic miracle was Mother Teresa the her she's now a saint and as part of that process there were some miracles associated with her and the first miracle was that a woman with tuberculosis was treated for tuberculosis by her doctors meanwhile she prayed for her cure to her cancer and which she did not have and later was cancer-free so when I was a kid like the miracle on late Friday night it was there was that old joke of you know the guy standing around with the banana in his ear and he's like ha why are you saying there was a banana here and he's like it keeps the elephants away and there's no elephants around here see it's working hey I I prayed for a cure to the cancer that I didn't have and I don't have cancer all right I'm gonna skip one here so if a typical miracle is just partially a partially hidden fraud what does that say about the rest of the miracles and what does it say about the people promoting them and that the answer is this marketing and the marketing thing is kind of interesting in every single one of these miracle stories I've heard has been about marketing god of some sort of marketing the religion and in the following angles are not miracles so the next little group of things will be things that are unverified they don't have a marketing angle and so they're they're not considered miracles okay from the Bible lot impregnates both of his daughters despite allegedly being too drunk to notice they were bouncing on him and I would say that's a miracle it comes close the natural order of things you know yeah male anatomy just doesn't work that way if you if you're if you got somebody bouncing on you evidently they hadn't heard of whiskey dick yet right whiskey dick that's right lightning hitting churches but less frequently brothels that's not that's not a miracle Wow for something to be fair there there are probably more churches than brothels yeah and and and churches are built on higher higher ground and these sorts of things UFO sightings not miracles let's see child molesting Catholic priests have rarely gone to jail for their crimes not a miracle there's there's one that's uh that hit me because I was in the Bosnia and Croatia area there's a shrine there called mid you mid juror key majority and it's interesting in that there's there's a couple of people who were kids back in the 60s and 70s and who are now in their 50s or my age and they regularly get Marian apparitions supposedly and these people are still doing that and it's a big it's a big Catholic thing and what's interesting is that the Catholic Church is kind of hemming and hawing about whether this is this is a miracle or not and I think it's because they're not making money from it yet they're kind of iffy on this and saying well you know I'm alternatively if they could find a way to make money from it I think would be declared that's right that's right you know jay-z ever heard not debated a couple of people who were Mary ologists and they were you know oh yeah interesting stuff I don't know if they got visions or not but okay but they were experts in Marriott by the way I have a slight correction I misspoke a minute ago when I was talking about Isaiah and in Matthew so first of all the it's Matthew and Luke that talk about Mary being a virgin and when I said Isaiah doesn't really talk about a virgin giving birth what I was trying to say is the passage there under most reasonable interpretations talks about a young woman giving birth to a son and his name shall be Emmanuel mm-hmm which isn't Jesus right yes so that's our there's another little little wart on that whole thing - yeah one more thing on this this group of group of people who are claiming Marion visions they actually get messages from Mary and all of the messages are drivel here's one little children pray pray pray that's the whole message that's the whole message from Mary Mary Mary why you buggin yeah right okay we've talked about miracles what about multiple miracles well if there's a financial incentive to promulgate a miracle there's gonna be from more financial incentive to promulgate multiple miracles and some more miracles are just more marketing and because a miracle is not evidence of anything multiple miracles are not evidence of anything either the the quote is the plural of anecdote is not data either thing to remember is that we're not talking about multiple miracles we're talking about multiple claims about miracles yep yep yep so yeah definitely don't don't buy it you know check out the claims first and an without a financial asset of miracles or memes which have their own reasons and mechanisms for promulgation so think of x-files playing into alien abduction stories right and and what the little green men look like or gray mare a gray yeah gotta fix that I'll send them to you so miracles are our holy I'm convincing to atheists they should be unconvincing to everybody everybody anybody trying to sell you something based on miracles clearly lacks anything more substantial and they are working a con and this is Christianity certainly relies heavily on miracles and that's that's a failure of Christianity amen amen let's take calls cool guy anybody wanna in particular you want to start with I haven't thought that far advanced all right well we're gonna start with Michael in Florida thanks for waiting you're on with Donna Matt hi hey yeah we're just calling because off I'm not a believer in God but I believe that we have a soul or some kind of you could call it just some conscience but there's something there that helps us it's curious because I think Donna and I would both agree that we have a part of our mind that is correctly labeled as a subconscious and neither of us would agree that we have anything that would be correctly labeled a soul so are you referring it's something that sort of lives beyond our physical bodies yes okay I don't I don't know of any evidence for that do you well personally whenever I was a kid social I was probably still in training pants and my brother he was five years older he took the mattress off the baby and the baby leader for him he put it on anybody he made a little tiny gap between it and the wall he's trying to fit in there he couldn't sit and as little as I was I'm not considering that little hole and I crawled in that hole all sudden he grabs ahold to bed and kicked with his legs and shoved the mattress into me into the wall as hard as he could I was probably two three at the oldest all sudden and the mattress to bed me we also went backwards away from the law so that to me is not just sometimes that's something else I don't understand what you're saying about what happened so you crawled between a mattress and a wall and your brother tried to squish you between the mattress and the wall and yeah and then what happened okay now Adama Lee Jae I can learn was blacking out I couldn't breathe it was like a locust circular every time I took a breath I couldn't inhale okay sir you say your pain you're being squished and this lack of oxygen begins to deprive your brain of oxygen and you start to pass out what the hell's I got to do with this old because what what made the whole mattress my brother and me the whole bag everything it's a little way from the wall what is that 83 year old kids or something else I have no idea but first of all I don't believe that that happened okay I believe that you're convinced that it happened but you're talking about how old are you now I'm 58 yeah yeah so you're talking about a 56 year old memory that you've massaged over the years why on earth would you think it's what's accurate hell I don't remember anything from when I was 2 or 3 but I can tell you things that happened to me when I was 16 which I know I'm wrong about I understand a lot of times that people are wrong mistake in short stories change over the years but this is something that happened that I'm never going to forget why would I change it's only to myself because we all do that story yeah we all do that we we know that memory is faulty and I'm not saying that you're intentionally changing the story I'm not accusing you of deception intentional deception it's just what we do but you know I first of all we have no way of investigating this or testing it or whatever else and all I have is a really vague description of the bed and everything flew away from the wall well for all I know your parent came in and yanked the bed away in order to rescue you and you were unconscious and then you're you know they drugged your brother out to a jam or whatever else and laid you on the bed and then your brain it reminds me of near-death experiences that people claim to have because what actually happens okay congratulations dr. Michael I'm glad you determined it wasn't a near-death experience more like what you said the first time hang on because I bet if we rewind this call I'm the one that said you almost passed out and you said you almost died I benefited around the fall that's it was said it's more like that I almost passed out I don't think I almost died I think I was going to die if they hadn't kept out my mother came in afterwards because she didn't know what happened I don't know what's it made a noise I don't know you're right but I am your brother pulled the bed away from the wall here's another theory you were afraid and you had a burst of adrenaline and you pushed it exactly but I don't think that you you're old kid usually does stuff like it usually they died yeah first time two year old kids don't aren't usually being squished to death so of course we're under but here what the hell does any of that have to do with a soul because what you really have is a is a memory of an event that may or may not be accurate and something that happened that you don't have an explanation for how did you get to a soul from that that's just the first one I'll give you two more examples that I know I don't Michael I don't need I need a plural of the Anna I don't need ten examples that have nothing to do with the soul I want to explanation of how this got you to the the notion of us all because I'm just saying that there's something there that keeps us alive keeps us belong even when we're unable to comprehend your whole world around us and yet people die every sense is gone all right sometimes it happened dead but the majority of times what people have their instincts for survival something that keeps them going yeah yes I agree we have an instinct for survival what the hell's that have to do with the soul what comes like that's that if you let me finish there's another time when I was don't need it here's the thing Michael this is what you're not getting I agree with you we have an instinct for survival that's caught that's what our brain does if there's nothing about the first story that necessitates the soul then let's admit that that first story is not in any way evidence for soul you know they don't get to add up ten things you don't get to add up ten things that don't evidence for the sole independently and claimed that the ten of them together are evidence for sole that's not the way evidence works I'm just saying I'm going to give you one from the beginning for new and recently and if you don't want to hear and that's fine but the other two are not the same story give us your very best Yulin okay just tell me why you didn't start with the best one I'm just saying I started at the beginning when I was I was a kid okay but that's Michael are we at least in agreement that there's no evidence for a soul in that first story in the first story short put them all three together no no no no no no I just explained this if I have one story that's not evidence for soul and then I present a second story that's not evidence for soul and a third story forever that's not evidence for soul I haven't come up with a combination of stories that's evidence for a fucking soul that's not the way this works you're not listening to the other stories to know the evidence and you do as a soul why didn't you if you if I tell you what if I ask you what evidence do you have for soul and you tell me a story that has nothing to do with a soul why the fuck when I listen to another story from you because I'm saying the souls the same as our subconscious the guardian spirit soul whatever you want to call it those things aren't the same those just pretending okay congratulations we we all have a subconscious yeah okay okay so what would tell me whatever instead of telling stories why don't why don't why don't you say why you think that there's something supernatural here or something that / that it goes beyond our death because I'm trying to tell you but you keep the trees listen to you that's not an answer sir wind on her wind on asks you a question and you say I'm trying to tell you but you won't let me now all you're done is doing is pouting answer the question what's the question if you don't want to why your evidence do you have for a soul that's like I said to me you can consider your subconscious as a soul it does more than just saying sorry well we need a haven't we we're gonna do a special episode of the show where we talk about what the fuck evidence is because when I ask for evidence and you say well we can view the subconscious as a soul I no longer give a shit because you know what I can view this Canada this bottle of coke zero is God I can view this phone as peanut butter I'd be wrong but I can do it that that's not evidence telling me that you're convinced that the subconscious is a soul is not evidence of anything other than you believe this and the thing we're trying to get to is why do you believe it why do you think that this is true and why should anybody else believe it if somebody had called up and and said oh I've got evidence for a soul and then they when asked for evidence of the soul said well you could look at the soul as if it's just yourself conscious or subconscious sorry no that's not that's not evidence why would you call in and say you have evidence for something or the igg you know that you have a reason to believe for something and then just say oh because basically what you're saying there is I like the notion of the soul I don't actually have any evidence of a soul or anything is going to exist beyond us and so I'm going to look around at the things that I don't have an explanation for like consciousness and subconscious and weird circumstances where you might be passed out and something strange happens and so you're taking all of these things that you don't have an explanation for and saying you know I could look at that and say it's a soul well congratulations yeah you can do that with anything that doesn't get us to evidence and it doesn't it's not how you go about showing that a lot of this whole stuff seems to be wishful thinking right I've I'm gonna I'm gonna see my relatives you know when I when I die and they're still with me these sorts of things the idea of a soul is comforting but it's spiritual thinking all evidence that we have is that when you're when your brain dies you die and there's nothing no more to it yeah I'm I pointed out I don't know a gazillion times to how that the soul is the single most dead concept in all of theology because of what we know about the brain we don't know everything about the brain but it's like if I'm rolling a die and it's a standard six-sided die half of what you would roll it at a craps table and it comes up a four you know we roll it boom it's four and somebody says why didn't that dice roll come up before and your answer is ah I have a guardian angel who when I roll the dice makes sure that it lands on for when it when I need it to land on four you've come up with an unfalsifiable proposition that might be comforting it's the same thing we do with lucky socks and rabbit's feet it's it's about confirmation bias and stuff like that and so if we pick up that time we roll it again and it comes up a to what you owe my guardian angel didn't make it come up before because we didn't need it to come up before then that's right that's that's what's going on and so when we look at this soul there's no in a die roll there's no room left to reasonably posit external influence we know about physics we know about die roll we can measure this we know that the odds on a standard six-sided die is that one out of six time it's going to land on this specific number we can roll them and roll them and roll them and roll them and simulate it and everything else and they fall into this normative distribution for fair dice that's that's just what happened so there's no room left in a die roll to say ah an angel made it land that way there's no room left in the things that we identify or used to label as the soul given what we know about the brain and how it functions about how our memories are malleable our personalities are malleable your everything about you can be reset you can get amnesia you can sever the corpus callosum and wind up with two distinct independently communicating personalities within a single head there's no room left to posit a soul because the one view of the soul is that it's the ghost in the machine I have a spirit that is basically guiding and directing this meatsack around the planet and it's making decisions and it is the thing that is going to be judged morally as good or bad or whatever the problem is take that split brain example which I've used before if two personalities in the same brain they communicate independently one of them believes in God one of them doesn't now does that mean that once upon a time this brain had a soul and now the soul is completely moved over to hemisphere and the other hemisphere is just screwed does it mean that each of those have half of a soul none of this actually makes any sense at all but the bigger issue is that every time you posit some space for a soul every new discovery that we find about how the brain works closes another door for the soul and the gods not there to open a window I know they say that when you know so I'm when a door closes somewhere God opens a window you don't get deposit that it's the same thing we did with evolution when we talked about this diversity of life where we have common ancestry and then it branches out in like a tree and you're like oh but that's where God intervened hey God God flipped this little DNA switch to make humans distinct from the other grade-a he kills he kills and messes with the sex lives of animals yeah that's the main way you would do that yeah it's you know I get it okay you don't believe in God but you do believe in a soul if somebody asks you why you believe in something and you tell a story and they say I don't see what that has to do with the thing you're talking about it's it's not never gonna be good to go on to another story yeah if people are looking for evidence oh here's something that happened to me because first of all I do not believe that what you are describing actual accurately represents what happened I will believe that it accurately represents what you remember what is in your mind it's like when somebody tells me they were abducted by aliens do I believe they were abducted by aliens no am I willing to accept that they are convinced they were yeah they're there seem to be plenty of people who are otherwise rational and for whatever reason they've interpreted a certain experience as this was an alien abduction and I'm fine you can tell me your story and when an alien abductee or a claimed alien abductee tells me their story I'm gonna say how does that prove that it was aliens how does that prove it was aliens because that's what skepticism is asking those questions that most people are too uncomfortable to ask because we're so terrified of not knowing and some of us are so terrified or some people are so terrified of not fitting in with everybody else you know I don't share your god belief but I'm spiritual but not religious or I think there's a soul you know don't don't crucify me the way you those guys on the atheist show who are telling you you know oh no no no you don't have evidence and everything else I'm kind on your side and just not you know all the way there it's cowardice and I don't mean that in the sense that that it's a character flaw for the individual that you're a terrible person we are all guilty of it almost all the time and the goal as far as I can tell should be when you're made aware of this to work to change it but where we're going next oh my goodness let's take a theist yeah there's five five or four and four and a half we'll go with Raphael in Florida you're on with Donna Matt oh man how's it going guys hey mixed bag how are you yeah I'm doing all right the main question I would ask is um let's say you have to being let's say a pedophile priest who hurts Spencer's life hurting children and atheist who's as a doctor spends his life helping children what do you use to determine which being is more moral than the other I don't so there's about 12 things to correct there real quick first of all and this is just a pedantic point we probably should say pederasty priest because that's about the act pedophile while it's been used as a pejorative forever really just describes someone who is sexually attracted or aroused by children and that's independent from what they do and that's not a choice or decision they made any more than they chose to like chocolate ice cream over vanilla those people are in need of help but there are plenty of people who have those attractions who never act on them so that's just a linguistic thing if I'd rather point to Petter Esprit I don't look at individuals and sum up their character as a whole and say Oh Don is more moral than Matt I look at events and determine whether or not that those events were moral or not and so the Atheist who's helping people could also be doing a thousand other things that are you know much much worse than or at least in the same ballpark that we know about so you can't summarize the whole of somebody's character by an individual act and I know that's troubling for a lot of people as is the comment about pedophiles but it's just the way it is I'm not defending you know the rape is rape and it's disgusting it awful always yes we look at it is more horrific when it's you know Madonn with children there's no way to excuse an inexcusable thing and those people need to be held accountable for it that's independent from what they're attracted just like if somebody was attracted there's there's objective files who are attracted to mailboxes they didn't choose to be attracted to a mailbox and as long as they're not molesting my mailbox good for them but I find it difficult to sum up the whole of somebody's character to say this is a good person or this is a bad person but I recognize that colloquially what we tend to do is there are some things that are so horrific that we look at it and just say this is a bad person and I'm fine I'm fine with that I just don't tend to do it I tend to talk more about what they've done as bad not not even because I'm convinced that everybody's capable of redemption let's get to the larger question of how would we judge a moral I mean I guess you could say maybe an error on my part in the way of asking the question but I guess I could reframe the question towards you know maybe their intent and their action we can maybe say which action is better than the other well helping people is better than raping people that one's pretty easy what one promotes well-being and the other does not alright so that was another point I wanted again to get to I watched your video on morality and I agree with a lot of things I disagree with some other things one of the main disagreements I had was about how you're talking about morality is based on well-being but you don't really go much further than that I guess the thing that I would argue that well-being isn't just an action is well-being isn't it an action is no well-being is the state that you're comparing things to and it's not completely understood and we don't fully understand well-being but we understand enough so the fact that we don't have all the answers doesn't mean we don't have answers like would you agree with me that feeding someone who's hungry is better than raping someone yeah and we don't have to go to oh the reason for that isn't because a God says so or anything else it's about which one promotes well-being and which one tracts from it now then you can have more complicated questions of is it better for me to keep giving someone free sandwiches or to teach them how to be self-sufficient well that's a little harder to figure out which one of those might be better than the other but I would say that both of them are still on the good side of the line and so pointing out things where we may not necessarily be able to say this is morally right because I think there are some things that are essentially amoral where there's no more like it's not immoral for me to log like chocolate ice cream oh great unless liking chocolate ice cream encourages me to buy more chocolate ice cream which fundamentally affects my health which affects the rest of my life which can have moral consequences for the people around me and if the ice cream that I'm buying this particular chocolate ice cream that I like is being the ingredients for this are being immorally produced and you've got child labour and all this other stuff you could go down to my liking of you could you could do that you could say oh you like chocolate ice cream therefore you're a shitty person because it has all of these other consequences and it may even be the case that if I'm aware of those consequences now it does become something where I'm immoral but but that doesn't mean that we're stuck where we can't decide anything I agree on so would you agree that the action of somebody caring about the well-being of someone else would agree that that could be called baby loaf you you could it would fit love it love us defines them a different ways you could love compassion empathy empathy is probably where I tend to go which would you agree that God in a general sense has to do with power and authority I don't know what which God which God are we talking about I mean we don't know of any Garth Abrahamic religions and their usages of the word God as far as I understand there's two main usages there's you know lowercase G and capital G lowercase seems to me a bit more towards sorry I have to laugh you know mankind has invented you know tens of thousands of God the uppercase G is is is used for a Christian God and it's kind of like naming your dog dog I think it's but what is it you're asking about well just that God in a general sense has to do with power and authority like you don't call something a god if it's not if you don't see it as a power authority generator no no no there could be a like if let's say the Abrahamic God was was real yeah I would agree that that that God is described as powerful and I would agree that there are people who think that God has Authority I don't recognize any authority over me what about the deistic god who who you know may it may have created the universe and you know when often for a fishing trip or something but but also power and authority aren't morality power and authority even if we said ok yes the Christian God is portrayed as powerful and and portrayed as an authority that's not what morality is no so basically the point I'm trying to get at is that own God in as far as I understand and you can correct me in a general sense in Abrahamic religion in the Bible you like to maybe refer to something that people worship or revere or value and everybody is based on well-being because love is an authority on how we should behave no I guess the argument that I want to get to with that know that but knows that God is love yeah no that's absolutely garbage from start to finish and and I can kind of explain why so the fact you're kind of like making an argument from analogy that well morality is a little like this and that comes that that is derived from these characteristics like love and God is a little bit like that so now God is is somehow tied to morality well the truth of the matter is is that the Abrahamic God we have no evidence that it exists but even if it does exist and we go through what's written about him what's spoken about him it's a it's a jealous God a vengeful God a loving God the fuckin stirs yeah he's a monster at times yes he has power yes he has authority he's not in any way about equality or fairness or justice or the things that we actually value because we now understand that those things directly contribute to the well-being of humans that matter of fact there's no evidence that this god cares at all about the well-being of humans that the laws and instructions that he gives there's no evidence that those are about how to have a better life don't wear poly cotton blends don't eat shellfish you know don't pick up sticks on the Sabbath okay wait there's one here that says don't murder hey that leads to well-being therefore he got it right well if I make a list of a hundred things and you point to 20 of them in that list of 100 things and say those are good things therefore you have the authority on morality when those things are mind-numbing ly easy I didn't never need a God to explain to me why I shouldn't kill people yeah and I don't need a God to exist in order to have a rational justification for not killing people I'd rather not be dead Don would rather not be dead our continued existence is directly in the interest of our well-being and possibly in the well-being of society yeah okay let's not kill each other hey it's real easy thou shalt not steal how does that come about well I have stuff I'd like to have my stuff I'd like to be able to keep my stuff you'd like to keep your stuff and so we now we understand that the world is funding some protections around our life and our stuff because if we got rid of those protections then you could just walk in my house and take anything of mine that you wanted and there would be no recourse for that I couldn't even say you know setting aside the law I couldn't even say that was wrong the view except that we recognize that this is fundamentally doing harm to people that's that's all we need why would we need more than that and while you want to phrase it as like love first of all I'm not convinced the Abrahamic God has anything to do with love and considering a lot of the conversations that I've had with Christians including when I was and even myself when I was a Christian I think they have a very very very perverted view of what love is I mean first Corinthians 13 47 I think I was patient loved his time yeah love is patient love this kind of a V doesn't both so loved his child that them doesn't envy doesn't boast and this God that is supposed to supposed to be the the the perfect thing a perfect representation of love is envious and boasts as a matter of fact the whole Moses performing the the plagues is God showing off because what happens is Moses comes up and it's let my people go and Pharaohs like a screw you and then Moses does something terrible and and favorite Pharaoh said screw you and then faier is like oh yeah yeah I'll let him go and then what happens God steps in and hardens Pharaoh's heart so that he won't let him go cuz he's not done fucking showing off yet so much for that freewill thing where is it where is the love from the Abrahamic God ever for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son ah okay so we should murder somebody yeah I am I'm the supreme loving ruler of the universe and I make all the rules and I'd like to forgive you but I can't so I'm gonna come down and take human form and and have myself killed to temporarily give up a part of a weekend and then I get to continue being God to act as a loophole for rules that I created that's not love it's performance art whenever whenever my parents whenever my parents wanted to enter needed to forgive me they loved me and they forgave me I didn't have to do anything they certainly didn't have to kill my little brother now go back all the way all the way to the beginning to the ridiculous Genesis story God creates two people plants them down here and says don't eat these two trees but you can do you know pretty much whatever you wanna do with everything else now what kind of idiot doesn't understand that as soon as you put to essentially children in a room and say those are the two things you can't touch they're gonna go touch this well of course you know there's not a modern theologian that doesn't think God didn't know what was gonna happen of course God knew what was gonna happen and when God comes down to the garden is walk around going hey Adam hey Eve where are you why are you hiding oh we're naked Lord well who told you you were naked and and this is God from the Christian perspective look like a caring parent who's like playing hide-and-go-seek with a kid that's behind the chair and they don't have object permanence yet so they think that if they can't see you that you can't see them and so God knows all this is gonna happen and God knows what's going on he knows they're naked he knows why they're naked he knows exactly what happened and everything else and yet he's walking along and then all of a sudden it's like boom well I told you don't eat of that and now you're gonna you know I told you on the day you'd eat it you'd surely die except that he doesn't actually do that and through the whole story the only one that told the truth in the entire story was the serpent now that's there's no love coming from anybody in that story when when he decides to flood the entire planet because he is screwed up he's made people and they're just not doing what he wants him to do well I need to reset what kind of God wouldn't have known that was coming why would you need to push a reed like if I create a Sims game and they don't understand me that's my fault and if I create a Sims game and the Sims start doing shit I don't like I'm imperfect that will catch me by surprise but why would I ever create a Sims game knowing that they were not going to do what I liked and then I was gonna have to destroy all of them but eight people a drunk and his sons and reset humanity after that and then when that doesn't work then instead of trying to save everybody I'm gonna pick out one group of people and say you are my chosen people let's go out and kill all of the other people none of this this is this is what I talk about when when I say that Christianity Judaism Islam all of them have a perverted sense of what love is if they're trying to point to God is love I mean they have plenty of verses that state distinctly would love is their dozen rescuing the Bible or another person's how to understand how I mean I if I if I say if I say if I say to you Rafael I love you and I'd do something nice for you like I take you out to lunch and then I beat the shit out of you and I lie about you and I spread rumors about you and all these other things and you come to me and you say you don't actually love me what good would it do for me to say hey I bought you a sandwich you don't get to point to the things that aren't bad as a way of excusing the things that are yeah but I mean at the same time you're judging God's perspective from a subjective perspective and I think that's kind of like what others failed one other perspective could I possibly judge anything or anyone from other than my own yeah but that's not what I remember that and what I was trying to get at was you you don't not have children just because they might make some mistakes yes that's exactly why I don't have children how do you know it is perfectly like you can have children yeah I loved the way you phrased it accept the fact that they're gonna make mistakes yes yes but if you created the children flawed and you are the all-knowing all-powerful creator of the universe and you intentionally chose to create flawed children and then decided to punish them for those flaws you're a prick I mean how do you know he didn't give us freewill well because first of all we don't have free will in that context but second of all what difference it make if God created you with freewill knowing that it could go wrong and then punishes you for exercising the freewill he gave you he's still a prick how love by definition allows for free will yes but love by definition doesn't include punishing people for exercise in their free will why is this so difficult for you to understand actually love by definition does punish people who act against love really that's what love does that's what I'm talking about when I talk about a perverted sense of love yes you can love someone and want to correct bad behavior but you can do it in a loving way and not by creating a torture chamber in the basement where you're gonna send somebody forever I mean that's not generally the way I understand the Bible the way I've understood it was God sends signs God sends messages and gives people chances to turn their life around and then when they don't God has to be just why God is love and love takes care of his own I thought God was merciful and love was mercy mercy but well do you not know no no you can't have it you can't have it both ways Raphael justice means you get what you deserve and mercy means you are exempted from getting what you deserve you can't have both those are two sides of the same coin no they're not justice means you get what you deserve mercy is a suspense of justice you deserve to go to hell but God is going to be merciful and take you to heaven that's mercy and that's something that's designed from love so you don't get to say that sending me to hell and send is just and sending you to heaven is mercy and that they're both an exercise of justice because you got something you didn't deserve and so did I mean all of this kind of begs the question anyways you could replace the the pederast priest with with God and you could say God is immoral but the reason I do your more than the first proves you would the final is not loving but that is it's a whole loop again it goes back to what I'm saying about morality being based on love yes it's a loop because you're in a circular argument that begins with God is loving and just when you don't even have evidence that there is a God and all of the evidence about that God flies in the face of the claim that that God would be loving and just doesn't exist Wow no you know I tell you what I'm gonna let you go now Rafael and then when this clip comes up I want you to go back and listen to it and and I want you to email TV at atheists - community org with whatever sentence or word combination you think I uttered that made me claim made you think that I claimed that love doesn't exist because what you're doing right now is what you're doing right now what you shut the fuck up what you're doing right now is avoiding addressing the actual issue and making accusations against me that aren't true I didn't say love doesn't exist it doesn't but I hadn't said that yet a question I was asking for clarification yeah questions don't begin with it so you're saying love doesn't exist that's called a straw man framing and trying to play it up as a question now means you need to go listen to that and write us okay good day sunshine we didn't even get on the subject of slavery I'm trying to have to do that everybody okay it's just too easy just too easy yeah it's it's funny because when this actually the real problem was when we talked about you know he he wanted us to be able to sum up the entirety of somebody's character and I said I don't really do that I don't sum up even characters like the God of the Bible I don't sum up his entire character as if he's good or bad there are things that are attributed to that God which I would say are good and loving and there are things that aren't but when you try to simplify it to God is love love is what morality is about therefore God is about is about morality when all when you're pointing to the Bible or the the god of the Christian Bible the only evidence we have is of that fictional character and that fictional character is a mess yeah he's a dick oh I'm gonna love you but not you and I'm only gonna love you as long as you're doing what I say you're gonna do oh he beats me because he loves me he punishes me because he's just well where's the demonstration that what he's doing is just how His infinite punishment for finite crimes just let's make a deal with the devil and shit all over Jobe yeah oh go ahead destroy jobs life cuz you know this life is like dirty rags the entirety of Christianity turns everything we know about human experience in life into a place as you pointed out years ago as a place to wipe your feet before you get on to the real life right right that's just bizarre if the real life is what happens after we're dead and God already knows who's going to the good place and who's not why bother why didn't we start there why don't we need a dress rehearsal oh well you needed to live it so you'd understand it okay could God not create me and hell with the understanding of how I ended up there without me having to go through all the work what why do I do this thing with hell in the first place why create people what what was God missing from his perfection which is already a conundrum or a paradox so if God's perfect he's not missing anything but clearly he had to be missing something in order to creat people in the first place as a matter of fact that was one of the first questions in in oh crap I shouldn't there is a book that I'm working on it's not there's a lot going on but but the first question is why would God create anything in the first place if you're if I'm God and I'm all I know everything and you're perfect and I'm perfect I'm that I'm not my mess setup yeah and so oh well God just loved people who didn't exist so much that he wanted to give them existence even though he knows it's gonna be hellish and that a good chunk of them are gonna spend in it he created people knowing that they're gonna spend an eternity in some variety of Hell even if it's annihilation oh it's look it's this beautiful gift I give you well send a fuckin receipt next time cuz I'm sending it back Kelly in Iran thanks for waiting you're on with Donna Matt hi hi Dan hi hi Matt hi how are you I'm sorry about my voice oh it's that annoying oh it's fine okay I wanted to ask you um I've been looking into Matt's arguments against the causal argument for God's existence okay and before I delve into that the question that we raised just before answering my call why would God create anything um it's a very interesting question and I and I think I can offer an answer at least from the Muslim perspective if you don't mind sure um I mean here's the thing at least in the and the and the version of Islam that I believe in which is basically she Azzam um it's that God I mean even even the Christian perspective on God that is he loves people God doesn't love he doesn't have emotions he doesn't have feelings the way humans do and that that definition of God really troubles me um God God is perfect sure and the way I see it is it's in his perfection that led him to create people um we call it emanation it's when God emanates being into existence okay so I'm curious as to how you know God exists how you know God is perfect and how perfection involves emanating beings okay um so basically the argument goes as follows um first of all because we see that everything around us exists you exist and that exists dawn sorry all right that alone based on the principle of sufficient reason allows us to conclude that there has to be an explanation why everything exists I would agree in the sense that if we begin with the assumption that everything that's part of a causal chain has some cause that preceded it that it is reasonable to conclude that any observation has some explanation not necessarily in the way that we might always think about it you know because sometimes what we want to ask is well why is it this way as opposed to another way and the explanation is it couldn't have been any other way but even even using that observing that people exist doesn't mean we're getting to the point where we recognize there must be an explanation doesn't mean that that explanation is God oh I mean I see your point but here's the here's the thing I mean that entity how do you know it's an entity I mean I'm using entity you're right that's a very good question I'm using entity as a place hope something that I don't know just for now okay if we would agree that you don't know then how can you possible how can you believe that there's a God as is the most likely probable explanation that you don't have I'm reaching that point okay basically what I wanted to say is that entity which is for now let's agree that it's something I don't know it's not even something that entity has to have in one entity at least we can agree on the fact that it's one no why not because if somebody if somebody said what's the explanation for the atheist experience TV show and somebody could argue that that it's me they'd be wrong there's a ton of people that are involved with it there's people on the other side of the wall there's a long history to this it wasn't just a single person now we may get back to a point where there was one person in a discussion who said hey let's do a TV show it was you know but my minder saying is it for this it was Joe szymek a down roads and some others talking about it but it would be wrong to just assume that it's one thing just like when a fire starts there's a fire triangle which involves heat oxygen and fuel it's not just one thing that that is contributing causally to fire it necessarily is three things so if there's something that we don't know what the explanation is I don't know what justification you could ever have for claiming it's necessarily one thing because okay that's a very interesting thing regarding the fire that requires three things because here's here's where I'm coming from I see things that um two causes can never result in the exact same thing in the exact same way do we agree on that or no well it depends on what you mean by exact same thing for example going back to that's over service first of all the fire I still think that's a roadblock to what he just said but if I roll a die and it comes up before and I roll a die again it comes up before you could say ah well if we really look down and get you know kind of reductive on this you know these things happened at different times and so everything about the physical universe was slightly different etc but the the true the the resolution at which we can reasonably define what happens to a die when you roll it is about the shape of the die the surface that it's hitting the physics and yet doesn't necessarily at the same spot but if you look at the result of it rolled of four that can that can arise from a multitude of different individual actions right of course but my point is that there's only one parent throwing the die how do you know I can throw it with two hands that's exactly right what I do the table can be buried on and I can hold onto the die together and let go at the same time now there's two of us dropping the dye and it requires both of us to let go in order for that dye to drop but it requires only one person for it to drop No if if I'm holding on to the two the two and five and Don's holding on to the six and one and I let go that dice doesn't drop because Don still holding yeah and if Donna let's go and I don't the dye doesn't weigh mean exactly I'm literally showing you that here's something that would require two individual agents to act in order for this to happen and you're saying exactly it's one person I agree I agree I mean that point is completely fair my point is that you can't hold the dye in a sense and this on two ends of it yes you can I can do it with a bone look this there's this sign there's this side which is a little long for me then there's this way and if I hold here and Don holds grab yeah oh no no they're not the same ones yeah like opposite now when I let go the phone doesn't fall and if Don let's go the phone doesn't fall you can do the same thing this is yes this is any long gating cube essentially or these are really bad magic tricks bad are the worst but I'll show you a better one later okay all right so what do you mean you can't hold a die by the ends when when I can demonstrate to you that we can if I had to die here I'd show you with the die but I was hoping that my phone which is in a good approximation of a die would be sufficiency husband hey sorry no sadly I can't see you oh my apologies it's okay um can I give another example cuz I think that one would be fair okay basically for example if you're shooting a bullet at a window um if you're shooting let's say two guns okay and both bullets hit the window at the same exact time the window will break so you can say sure that the bullets both of them caused the window to break but the problem arises when we when we think that there's no problem it's just a fact that the two bullets have to exist in two different positions relative to the window yeah then they and they break the window in two different locations sure but they don't break it's in the exact same way that's what that's why I just said they break it in two different locations exactly so they don't break it in the same way so what so what you know I don't even know why you came up with an example of two bullets see this is like this is like the guy who tried to point to the things that were good in the Bible as a way of avoiding talking about the things that are bad I can shoot a single bullet at a window and it'll break a window I don't need Zack to - for that exactly so why would you come up with an example that doesn't require - as if it's a refutation of an example that does require - because this is the case where this is what how justice came about and this is a big leap how do you know how the universe must have come about because we're still working on that I mean because here's the thing the universe is the fact isn't it there is a universe you and I are in agreement that the universe exists and I really hope we agree on that do we do we agree that we don't know how or why the universe exists corpus then why did you just pretend to know how or why the universe exists if we don't know how or why the universe exists you can't claim that the universe must have become from a single thing because of the fact that the universe couldn't have come to existence that's not a fact that's an assertion by you you just acknowledge that we don't know how or why and now you're going on to make claims about what you know about the origin of the universe I can start this year this is one of those things where it's it's our intuitions and our frustration with not knowing where we look at this we go oh well of course if the universe had a beginning it must be something like this and yet we also have to acknowledge that we don't know that that we can't explore that that we don't currently have evidence for it the best thing we have is sort of currently we have the modern Big Bang cosmology but that doesn't explain the how or why it's more of an explanation of what right now we can't even get back beyond the point time and there are whole realms of physics that defy intuition and arm-chair understand yeah but I think those are magical thinking yes I am a big fan of falsifiability and demonstration and in the fact that you have a model that can make reasonable predictions is neat but it reminds me of of essentially like Newtonian physics which it works well in the context in which it works and yet it does not accurately describe what's going on at the universe at another resolution exactly yeah and so until we're able to investigate and explore the universe at the particular resolution that we want to provide an explanation it would be a mistake for us to make any kind of claim about what the nature of that explanation might be for example the origin of the universe it could be the Abrahamic God it could be the God of some other religion it could be some sort of multi first thing it could be universe creating Pixies it could be and I'm gonna sing it let me let me correct this I'm not saying those are actual epistemic bills I'm saying that those are things that we cannot rule out and so if I have a twenty things that I can't rule out and potentially an infinite pool of things that I know nothing about not only can I not say that the answer must be one of the twenty things that I can't rule out but I can't since I can't rule out this the things that I don't know it would be a mistake for me to say that it must be one of these twenty that's that's the that's the arrogance that we do this is why the argument from ignorance which is I'm right until you prove me wrong and the argument from personal incredulity which is I'm gonna stick with this explanation because I can't think of anything better are both more about us and our failure to recognize the limits of our understanding and our discomfort with saying I don't know and so when somebody says ask me what's your explanation for the origin the universe I don't have one well doesn't that make you uncomfortable yeah it really does I'd love to know but the difference is I'm not willing to pretend that I know and I'm not willing to make claims about the nature of what the cause might be when I have to recognize that I don't know anything about the nature of what the cause might be and how can you live with that because there's a lot of things we don't know and there's a finite amount of time because I'd rather live being intellectually honest and open to explanations that are supported by evidence than to say wow I don't want to live in a world where I don't know where the area universe or originated so I'm gonna make something up the comforting lie that we tell ourselves is not you know guess people do that because they're they're just comforting but your question of how can you live with that if you pretend that you have the answer you stop looking for the answer and you Meyer the world in ignorance forever and while it may be a comforting ignorant lie it's still a comforting ignorant lie and if you stop with that comforting ignorant lie and say let's go out and see what we can discover we may never be able to know what the true explanation of the origin of the universe is but as soon as we put up that roadblock it leads us to the temptation to start putting up other roadblocks to things that we might be able to know when when religions pretend to have the answers to things that humans don't know some people are not satisfied with the comforting lie and so they go out and explore and they find out you know what the earth isn't the center of our solar system or the universe you know what lightning doesn't come from Thor Odin etc sorry ocean all of these things that we'd want to know anybody can come up with religion that says ah here's the explanation why do why do some men like men what's the explanation for that why are some people born intersex why do some people have gender dysphoria in ideas like that why do some people have lighter skin and some people have darker skin if we just say well with what with what religions have claimed we would before the world would be devoid of technology of understanding of the sort of inspiration that makes you go out and look for for it for answers when you say how can you live not knowing that I don't know how anybody could live with without real that they don't know it life is about this pursuit of finding out and understanding the world and if you're willing to just take whatever comforting lie somebody offers you I don't know that you're living your your existing your persisting but without that sort of curiosity without this drive to find out what the hell is actually going on that would be look that would be the life that would suck for me but my perspective is that first of all thank you so much for that um it really made me open my eye on several things I'm happy thank you yeah but one of the things that I might disagree with slightly is the fact living with a religion makes you so close-minded I mean one of the things you mentioned is gender dysphoria and I myself have gender dysphoria as you might have realized yeah I mean in around specifically would have been paying things they were against was I'm admitting that gender dysphoria should be treated and men should you know that they're women should be that should be treated and vice versa this was an issue in Iran and wasn't solved and it wasn't accepted until recently but here's the thing they accepted it it was something that they came at the end of the day something that's fine to the extent to the extent that somebody's accepted it wasn't religion a roadblock to to preventing this from being accepted much much earlier but that's but here's the thing my perspective is that religion was the thing that that made people open-minded about it it wasn't religion that was against it I believe that the people were and the religion helped the people open their eyes in a sense to realize that because in the Koran itself it says um you should think and the end of the day that was the thing that made people realize that it's that it's not an issue what does the Quran say about sexuality and gender is it supportive of homosexuality is it supportive sorry aurilla homosexuality is not I know I wasn't done okay um when it when it talks about homosexuality I don't think the Kranz in favor but when we talk about when we talk about transitioning from one gender identity and expression to another I don't think the Quran is in favor of that either it doesn't say anything about it actually really well yeah I I agree that it probably doesn't use those terms but exactly but you don't think it talks about the concepts at all it talks about I mean here's the thing um what it is to be a man what it is to be a woman what those roles are because because because if the Quran was actually okay with someone a someone who was assigned female at Birth transitioning to a man to conform to their own understanding of their gender then why on earth would would we have different roles for men and women in the first place in different positions if if if you say men can do this and women can do this and then someone who is assigned female at Birth says oh I'm gonna transition and be a man well and have more rights now there's no reason to have those those roles you know where men have rights and women don't oh I want to I'm I was assigned female at birth but I'd like to drive a fucking car without having a male chaperone around me so I'm gonna transition to be a minute that's I understand that's not what the gender dysphoria is but one time about from the model from the Quran I think the concepts are there that women are inferior that they don't have the same rights as men and so this notion of people Trent that's not what that's not the reason I would transition to a man I didn't I didn't remotely say that that's why I okay I mean let me let me back this up because I I I'm not talking about the reason that you would I'm saying if you have a religious structure that says every man gets these rights and women don't and yet we're okay with any one of you identifying as either man or woman that erases the need to have the distinction between the two of them and I don't think that that's considered that the notion of transitioning is consistent with a Quran but that's I mean I don't get that point honestly because I mean sure it does talk about the different roles but that's only for as a social structure it was talking it's also here yeah so it was only talking about that I wasn't touching on um the the necessity of not having or not allowing transitioning I mean sure the roles are there and that's exactly why I'm transitioning because my inner self I more agrees with those rules than other roles so the rules are important and they are there I don't know if that goes against what you said but I have to make that clear well we may need to do more research on the Quran but certainly there's this idea in the United States of from the Christian community that you know God made you a certain way and you know if you think you're you need to change then then you you are wrong and God is not wrong there's that's horrible no in fact God made you a certain way and you proven willing to change perfect what prove God made me anyway hypothetic nice try I'm not a I'm not an expert on the Quran so I'm not gonna keep digging in on it but I find I find it bizarre after having so many Muslim attacks Muslim friends over the years that anyone could suggest that the Quran is in is in any position other than directly in opposition to the notion that someone can transition gender this is this is a concept that would not even have existed or been broached at the time in in the way that we do it now exactly that's why it has no say on it okay that's absolutely ridiculous why the default position is that it's permissible unless stated otherwise and it's not stated otherwise unless someone brings out a verse and explains it in a certain way then then that's a different story okay so so here's a piece of advice I wouldn't run around and most of the Muslim LED countries suggesting that the Quran is okay with people transitioning gender I probably wouldn't do that but I mean and why wouldn't you do it would you fear for your life no because the version of Islam that they have is the horrible one oh they just haven't found the right Islam problem that's good we know that one yeah that's if we get that from Christians all the time so congratulations you are all engaged in the same sort of confirmation bias bad shitter II but my point was that that in Iran I mean it's widely understood I mean we study philosophy we study ethics I just widely understood what the Quran is is this example and so what is it Iran Iran is an unusual country in the in the education level of the the populace and and the it doesn't have quite the religious stronghold that other like say Pakistan or Saudi Arabia has as far as the strength of the religion and and the power of the religion and such is is a bit different there it what this conversations turn into so there's a there's a ton of different Christian denominations and I'll stick largely with what I know a bunch of gay friendly churches all over the place there's one here in town we use on occasion for meeting place crosses and rainbows all over the Bible is directly in opposition to homosexuality there's no port okay and and so the people who are suggesting that Christianity is compatible with homosexuality are inventing a heresy now I think I think I'm in agreement with him about you know homosexuality rights and freedoms and stuff like that they're inventing a heresy and so there's no way for them to show that they have the right version of Christianity and let's say some jackass like Stephen Anderson has the wrong version and yet you're calling in to talk about Islam and to say that oh those other those other versions are wrong well how do you know yours is right because because wouldn't it also make sense that you have picked or massaged diversion of Islam to conform to what you want it to be I [Music] don't know I don't either and until somebody gives me a way to know I I'm stuck looking at both of them saying neat you know it's it's like we'll go back to a die roll somebody roll to die in a box and neither da nor I can see it Don starts the religion that the die roll was a two and I start the religion the die Worrell is a five and we are forever blocked from demonstrating which of us is actually correct and yet we will fight wars and kill people left and right because I'm convinced that Don is a fucking heretic how dare you think that you could come up a - by the way is always on the opposite side of a 5 on it correctly standard six-sided die so your if you are on the satanic this is the this is worse and said to outsiders when we need some way to know how one comes about understanding that their version is correct and it all gets back to the foundations that we were talking about earlier where I have no evidence that God exists so I have no evidence that a God participated in in either the beginnings of the universe the beginnings of the Old Testament the beginnings of the Quran any of these things so quite frankly I don't give a crap what any of the books say none of them are authoritative or instructive for me and when people point to them and say oh well this part of the book is not nearly as bad as the other parts of the book I mean we did that earlier with a Christian so you're basically saying hey the Quran doesn't actually speak about trans issues and since it's not expressly prohibited then Islam must in fact be in favor of transitioning and yet I bet it I bet if you were to go back in time and around the origins of Islam around the time the Quran was written and tried to explain the concept of transitioning gender I think that it would be prohibited based on everything else that's in there it's just that they didn't have an understanding of this to actually prohibit it it's almost like the there's no real mention of lesbianism in the Bible because I don't think I don't think any of the men who wrote it had I've had a clue that that existed you know it's like you know what else isn't in the Quran prohibitions against manipulating DNA does that mean it's permissible No yeah now look I I want I want to backtrack a minute Kelly if I can because I know that you are in a particularly difficult spot and I you know when we're on the show we're having these discussions and the whole thing is tell us what you believe in why and we'll look into this and you know is there evidence for this and is this reasonable and despite what some people think my goal isn't necessarily to convince people that their belief is wrong as much as is to point out why I don't share their beliefs why it's not convincing for me or us you are in you know in a much more difficult spot as a transgender person as a a Muslim you're trying to find your way through all this and I want you I want you to know that irrespective of what you believe about a God or Islam or anything else you are a valued human being with and we are fully supportive of your transition process and who you are as a person even if you wind up inventing a version of Scientology that is fine with who you are my concern at the outset of this was when we were talking about you know causality and origins and stuff I just have questions and I love the fact that one of one of your question that I spent the most time on was you know how can you live not knowing that's the thing that most of us are uncomfortable with and I hope no matter what your view on religion is I hope you find a way to safely and happily live your life as the person who you are and one of the things that is incredibly liberating about not accepting religious claims that don't have evidence behind them is that I'm not in any way bound to them I am not beholden to anybody's antiquated ideas about gender I'm able to actually explore things and come to new understandings of those in the same way that I can explore the universe I mean granted I I can't go explore the universe I'm not I'm not assuming a physicist or an admin human yet but we are we are completely in your camp with respect to your life and who you are and what your rights should be and and how you should be allowed to live your life to the fullest as the person that you are that's secondary to the god thing so just because I'm I'm up here in debate mode going well that's bullshit and that's what about this not about this I don't want that to be taken as anything other than that an academic exercise which is actually for me that academic exercise despite the fact that's what we do it is of secondary importance I'm a humanist I know I'm a skeptic and I'm an atheist and of those three atheist is the least important part because if there's ever evidence for God that's the part that goes away but the skepticism and the humanism don't that's very inspiring actually well hopefully we've helped a bit of it trying to get on to some other calls cause back and and you know let us know what's going on and if you come up with more questions whether they be academic exercises on causal arguments or maybe you find something in the Quran that is is more supportive that at the end of the day though even if there was a Sura that said irrespective of the gender assigned to you at Birth all people are free to transition identify and and express gender in whatever way they want because gender is just a bunch of BS at least in the societal context I mean nobody's denying that there's not genetic differences between you know individuals but there's probably as many genetic differences between Don and myself as there is between you know myself and you or myself and assist woman or whatever else yeah we kind of did that it did the same thing well I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go down another sidetrack but it it I get that you think that the one thing you said that bugs me a little bit is that you think you thought that religion made people open-minded about this stuff and the reason that sticks with me is the sum total of my entire life's experience including all of these years talking with people who have different religious beliefs is I'm not aware of any religion with any sort of significant adherence that encourages open-mindedness some of them played lip service to it and then they set up protective barriers so like you know Christianity has verses about thou shalt not err you shouldn't put the Lord your God to the test you know god this is how we get to God works in mysterious ways within Christianity and why prayer tests fail but my commandment is put everything to the test question everything question every answer every authority don't sit there and on it's not like you're mired in questions all the time it is exercise reasonable doubt and try to make sure that you're not convinced of anything until there's really strong evidential warrant for it yeah and that is that what open-mindedness is not thou shalt not that's not open-minded you have to live this sort of way you have to pray five times a day you have to you know face Mecca you have to you know where Ana khwab or her job or whatever else you know these sorts of things you can't be out you know these these sort of legalistic prescriptivists instructions don't ever seem to me to come from a mind that is either open or encouraging an open mind and I find it a fascinating curious I love it I mean send us an email because I'd love to hear more about why you're convinced that it makes people open-minded I mean honestly the thought experiment that she gave me made me kind of doubt that well cool I'm when you do when he told me about if I went back in time and told ya that like I described my situation yeah I'm starting to doubt that honesty and Islam being significantly newer you know I've talked to Christians before and pointed out if you grabbed ten Christians from today that are in different denominations that agree and disagree on different things and you took all ten of them back 150 years and introduced them to 10 different Christians from their denominations if those denominations existed they wouldn't recognize each other and they wouldn't agree they wouldn't agree on morality you know you look back to the 60s when when women were wearing miniskirts and people are like oh my god it's the end of the world and and of course each year the world supposedly gets worse and worse and worse and yet the stuff I see people wearing into church now would not have been acceptable when I was going to church as a teenager for people to walk in wearing church and it's because hey wait the Bible doesn't say anything about what you should wear well actually yes it does you're not supposed to wear it mixed fabrics and you're also supposed to dress humbly and you're not supposed to put makeup and all these other things that are in there and yet Christianity has conveniently ignored those and it's moved forward and is more accepting of some things but it's not the religion that is making them open-minded it is the influence of the outside world that says no you don't get to tell us what to do anymore and that seeps in and it corrupts Christianity it's the reason that all religions are going to die one slow painful death it's gonna take a long while I mean I've got a pretty good job security here I think even though this is our lifetimes men anyway Kelly I really appreciate calling and by all means email us keep in touch let us know how you're doing and you know where you come out on this stuff and if you find better arguments we'd love to hear okay okay thank you so much thank you have a good day we go to the next caller yeah I just finished reading a book called sapiens which is kind of a 20,000 foot view of the history of humanity it's very interesting one of the points that's made in the book is around the 1300 1400s instead of making up shit on a map - for the stuff they didn't know they actually started saying we don't know this little thing over here and the map started you know saying hey this is terra incognita this we don't know this it went from there there be monsters right or - or I'm gonna make something up yeah no it's perfect yeah and and that really the point in the book was that that really drove an exploration let's go fill in that map what what if you sail off the edge of the Flat Earth yeah oh no okay so we're right that's what happened is the Bermuda Triangle where all those planes and everything in the boats supposed to go missing which by the way this is a joke there's nothing to this there's no permute a triangle has not appeared a rectangle parallelogram that one's an ax fallen out of favor but you know it's basically you can make the argument that we're really what's happening is that those planes went through a vortex and then disappeared over the edge of the flatter oh I thought they're having mai tais on the beach it could be or drinking rum at least we are we are 10 minutes past when the show is gonna end and there are still like four callers to get to so I need to I have five minutes left and I don't want to yeah before we actually have to wrap it up I don't want to be rude to any of these calls by saying okay you've got one minute to explain to me what God so here's what we're gonna do it's currently ten after six if you're on the phone stay on the phone but we are at the Atheist community volitans freethought library there's a bunch of people on the other side of glass and there's people out back and I believe has food arrived I'm smelling yes I'm smelling things I see people nodding like yeah thank ya ice cream speed it the fuck up as there's ice cream it's gonna melt and code so I'm gonna let all the people here at the building head off and start eating I'm gonna stay here and do an after-show thing where I try to get to all these four if you guys stay online I will try to get to all of you but I want to say thank you to everybody for tuning in today thank you dawn for coming in and presenting in another failure participating the people out there who are eager for their ice cream the folks on the other side of that wall right there our crew who are the ones that make all this show happen they're awesome special thank you to patrons and donors and members and don't forget about the bat crews we're just just over one month away and despite the fact that we we will probably only have the one boat and we're gonna expand it to but I think we're probably only gonna have one boat so there's not going to be as many tickets as we thought there were and we're like halfway there so atheist - community or you can go there to get information and click a link there to buy tickets to backers Dave Warnock will definitely be here there may be other speakers as well we may have a variety of things going on that day we're still flesh in doubt but if you saw Dave on here a couple of weeks ago and have visited his site and seen more talks from him it was like wasn't about yeah about about dying out loud mm-hmm I I'm looking forward to both the talk and the backers not just for the people who are be there but because we'll have the chance to have Dave back talk a little bit more about his story and what's going on in his life and then we're gonna have him sit on the show on Sunday after the bat cruise and take calls again cuz that was that was important and and it was impressed on me quite a bit and so we're really looking forward to have Dave back without I don't have any other announcements okay let's end the show thanks see you next week [Music] you

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 87,811

Rating: 4.8100891 out of 5

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

Id: a-eSCI0AA4I

Length: 103min 18sec (6198 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/snarkydude]

Don is such a great foil to Matt's defensiveness and irritation...I do love him and hope he doesn't leave the ACA like everybody else!

[u/NeonKrebs]

I do like Don, but the laughing over the discussion is frustrating to listen to