Atheist Experience #808 with Matt Dillahunty and Jeff Dee

you open yours under what you're for yeah hey everybody we're live this is the Atheist experience it's April 7th 2013 I'm Matt Dillahunty this is Jeff dee hi folks how you doing good man I know there's actually a red light on the camera which I had never seen before so who knows if it works on all three cameras or not so it's a live public access television program sponsored by the Atheist community Austin as you saw at the beginning but anyway we finished last week there was no show we were at the American atheist 50th anniversary annual convention right here in Austin Texas it was awesome I was basically going nonstop from about the Tuesday before the convention is when people started calling or showing up and and you know hey we need a ride here we're going to do this or get together it's great great time and they announced that next year's convention will be in Salt Lake City Utah so I am lobbying very hard to be a speaker at that convention as well because that just tickles me pink hi I missed it I was out of town yeah and you were missed I was doing a gaming convention in Columbus there were a number of people who came up and said where's Jeff where's Jeff and I said I don't know if he's coming or not but tell him I couldn't do it I'm sorry sorry we still live in a cool town but a quick note before we actually get to calls this is a live Colin show and they'll have the number for you at the bottom of the screen and after it's over those of us involved the show get together for dinner and we've been going to Threadgill 301 West Riverside Drive but Beth and I went to church this morning so it to kind of give the quick back story and then address the church thing real quick last week just before the convention on Wednesday evening there was a an event that was put together kind of hastily and I think it was called like meet the Christians or something like that but it was a panel discussion they had Dave Silverman and Kathy Johnson from American Atheists and also professor ASA grayling on one side of the table and on the other side are three pastors and I apologize because I don't know all their names so I'll just skip that part but basically it was a good discussion talking about for example what is something that you you think the people on the other side of the table think about you that you'd like to correct and so it was not it was not a debate it was more of a discussion and I met with all the pastors afterwards and they were all familiar with this show and some of them expressed that they were fans of the show and enjoyed watching it and one of those invited me I think we're going out to for dinner or drinks tomorrow night to talk a little bit but also invited me out to his church and so this morning Beth and I went and I won't go through the whole service or sermon or any of that stuff but it was Church doesn't feel the same to me anymore I mean not just because we've moved into this mega church era of let's put up a band and have big-screen TVs this particular church has multiple campuses and in Austin and so the pastor wasn't actually at the church that I was I just watched him on the TV which I guess I could have done at home because I'm pretty sure they livestream it too but and I don't want to go through the entire sermon but one of the things that came up was this idea that Christianity isn't a religion and and the his big point was that religions are created by men their religions spawned from men in particular men who look around at the natural world and then try to find a a causal explanation for it and appeal to a god and then invent these things down here and the Christianity is different because it is originates from God God sees a need in human beings and that's where Christianity comes from and curiously about five or ten minutes later in the same sermon he talks about how the people who existed before Jesus the people like Jobe and Moses and presumably Abraham they looked around at nature and discovered God I mean this is the origin of the very religion that he's talking about this this the foundations of Judaism clearly there's some little conflict here of this one's different but it was actually founded by these guys who looked around and saw God and tried their best to live in accordance with what God thought the other one is there's a this this news story that's been going around I've seen it come I actually talked to him it meant about it when he was here for the convention about the teacher who had people write Jesus down on a piece of paper and then step on it and one student didn't and he got suspended turns out I don't remember exactly the way the pastor this morning related but it wasn't it wasn't relate in a way that I think is extremely accurate because the teacher in question is a Christian and a Sunday school teacher and was having a discussion about the power of symbols and stuff like that the student did not get suspended for refusing to step on the piece of paper he got suspended for threatening the teacher afterwards basically getting into a big yelling match about how this was something that should never be done and the funny thing is and this is why I brought this up I've seen preachers do this exact same thing not necessarily taking a piece of paper right Jesus and having people step on it but pointing out to people as a matter of theology that the symbols and the words and and all this stuff is meaningless I've seen pastors rip pages out of the Bible saying this is not your pathway to heaven this is not in and of itself it's not sacred it's not it's not holy it is a representation of something and it is the thing that it represents that matters which I think may have been along the lines of what this teacher was trying to do this if I write down Jesus on a piece of paper how exactly does that tie into my mind with what I think of Jesus so I don't really see anything wrong with the actual event that took place but meanwhile this good Christian sunday-school teacher who had people step on a piece of paper that said Jesus has received death threats and racial slurs in response to this so you know I I won't just say that it was so more people need to learn the message of that class which is that the symbols are just symbols yeah not something to get all fired up about yeah and you know I won't be so glib is to say it's an example of good Christian love but I will say that I'm pretty sure that the people who are threatening this individual definitely identify as Christians and we're certainly upset that there religion was wide the other thing that he said this morning that kind of got me was this thing when people hit they're like hit your thumb with a hammer yeah go say Jesus Christ you don't say Muhammad or is it this is cultural I mean this is blindness to the rest of the world who don't actually probably say Jesus Christ when they hit themselves of the hammer you're looking at an individual living in a predominantly Christian society and seeing that reflected in society and then extending this to say that it says something important and significant about how Jesus Jesus is so much different that people are in other countries and other religions are going to take his name in vain I just it was it was wrong it incorrect uh-huh but it's just another example of that you know here's an example of a thing we have gotten away with all along in this case it's here's a thing that's pervasive in our culture that we happen to yell out Jesus that proves that that's right and we end and that means something it doesn't necessarily mean something just because just because there's a connection you can draw okay so anyway my experience at church this morning well they had doughnuts and muffins and stuff uh-huh which I heard were good I didn't have any because I'm not supposed to eat that stuff but so we'll see anyway we got a lot of colors lined up we'll go ahead and get started with George and Dunmore how are you yes hello this is pastor DeMuth I'm very happy to hear sir that you went to church I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll go more maybe you'll learn a few things I think I've spent quite enough time in church considering I spent the bulk of my life going to church you should spend your entire life sir going to church I believe well when I do you some good when I when I learned enough to realize that I didn't need it anymore I oh you need it sir believe me you need it very much and ah yeah why should we believe you when you say that we'll get to that later that's not really what I called him to talk about I did call into this show a few times in the past as well as written several emails and I do appreciate your time however I told you in previous calls that I am a teacher of religion and that I have a beef with this show mostly since it came to my attention that some of my eighth graders have watched it yeah I don't believe you for a second sorry so we've had this go-around before with somebody else who called in to say that they had a beef with the show because of their 8th graders that was the whole mark from stone church fiasco I don't I don't believe your story for a second but thanks so much Benjamin and Tel Aviv how are you I'm good how are you guys doing good ok can you hear me okay there's a little bit of echo on my side yeah sorry about the echo just make sure you got your stream turned off and ask your question or say we're going to say well we'll move on okay um a couple of weeks ago you had a discussion with the gentleman buh-bye by his accent I think he was uh from India maybe but the conv came right after he made some sort of racial slur that was really disgusting anyway yes he was talking about higher states of consciousness I'm trying to leave you about you know now that you're atheists and rational you can go further something like that and and I don't I can level a lot of conversation he said I could level up to the next level yeah yeah that was it and and that that threw me off because this an abject there's an aspect of subjectivity that's important in all our lives and that even even though we can't share experiences we need to be able to talk about them rationally outside of any religion or any belief system and it's something that often times in when talking to my atheist friends we tend to overlook and let me let me tell you what are they why I think it is there are so many experiences that I cannot share with you that are nevertheless important to understand each other take the the most basic one of them pain you cannot experience my pain this is not like saying oh you don't see the same red that I see this is literally my pain can only be mine but nevertheless we are going to create a oh I don't know a better society we need to be able to talk about individual pain in a way that makes sense to both you and I I'd say it's exactly like your red in my red but I agree I agree that I can't experience your pain but that doesn't stop us from talking about it right but how do you bring it to a level of rational discussion where we try to make for a better society and it's a it's an honest-to-god naive I'm sorry that wrong wrong expression it's an honest question and it's completely naive I'm not trying to lead you anywhere with that I don't see what the difference yeah yeah I'm not aware what the what the problem is we're trying to overcome I mean because yeah I guess somebody who who takes a hard line you know anything that is not absolutely objectively provable is not worth talking about that would be a problem but I'm not aware of huge numbers of these people causing trouble yeah it doesn't matter the exact quality of the experience of your pain is yeah kind of irrelevant as long as we are in agreement that we're similar beings and we have similar experiences and one of those things is pain and by the way this I mean we can hook you up to an EEG and see what's going on in your brain when you experience pain we're learning a lot more about that but I don't see I don't see that having anything I have a sufficient understanding of what it's like to be a human being and experience things that I can I don't need to know exactly what it's like to be Benjamin and Aryans things no probably don but speaking about pain is and i on purpose i use the the simpler or the simplistic example when you move to the other end of the spectrum to well-being to happiness then what constitutes individual happiness becomes blurrier and what becomes a what constitutes a just society a better society becomes a much more difficult subject of discussion and in i I guess has the point is that I have conversations with deeply religious people right and that's where we get stuck ok so they can empathize and they can understand my pain or anybody's pain but having that discussion about what is the the way to lead society forward how to get there how to have that conversation is very very difficult because I come from a place where I don't accept magical thinking and they start from a place where all they accept is magical thinking so you can see where the the horrible side of the spectrum it's easy to talk about but the nicer parts were to lead society you know what what to work for becomes more of a problem so your point is that the even though we each experience pain individually there's a lot of consistency as to what in what causes that pain things that cause pain to one person will tend to cause pain to another person whereas happiness things because happiness to one person are not necessarily the same as things that cause happiness to another right that's the point you're making I think oh yeah okay I get that again for making it for me so one of the things is when we want to make sure I understand when we're talking about you know essentially you're talking about addressing the issues surrounding morality particularly the things that aren't blatantly obvious to everybody that's right one of the things that we have to do is first of all we speak in generalities we do this for both moral well-being and we do it for health as well I mean it's one thing to say peanuts are good for you when there are people who are allergic to it so obviously there's going to be exceptions and we're just talking about general rules but there are things that are pretty obvious or should be and the longer we spend arguing over these things that should be pretty obvious the longer it's going to take us to address the things that are much more difficult I think morality as a whole is a lot simpler than some people have made it out to be they want to spend hours talking about MacGuffins of free will and subjectivity and moral relativism and all this other stuff or having to have some external moral authority I don't think that that those conversations are actually very productive when it would seem rather obvious that we talked about issues of Rights for example what rights we're going to grant people and how we're going to go about denying those rights there's some really difficult things to talk about and there's some more difficult things coming in the future what about subjects related to cloning and who owns your DNA and all of these other things about identity there's there's a wealth of moral quandaries coming down the pipe and yet we are still stuck battling over things that I would think should be much simpler about how we just generally should treat each other in that sense it's you're looking for for something that you don't have a solution for you other than reason empathy being the driving forces for how we treat each other well III wasn't so much looking for for a solution s or you know for an intelligent coming from from from you guys they're all nucleus and it's hard well let me let me to let me take a stab at it seems to me if if I think you're right the in your observation that the that which causes pain to people tends to be relatively consistent and that that which causes happiness to people tends to be much more individualistic but I think the answer then if you're looking for four Universal approaches to happiness as you just take a step back from the specifics and try to approach the subject from well on the on the broader view what sorts of things can we do in a society to enable individuals to each seek out and achieve those things which cause them happiness I I see what you're saying uh let let let me throw one last thing out and and and see what you guys make of it uh have you tried in conversation is this something that's been useful to use the veil of ignorance argument yeah as a way to to break through pre-established you know preconditions of fraud and and that kind of thing yeah and and just did just the other week actually for those who aren't familiar the idea of the veil of ignorance would be if you're going to set up a series of rules for the society that you're going to live in without knowing what your position in that society is going to be it relates to this idea of you know if you're going to divide a cake up a bunch amongst a bunch of people you have one person cut the cake and that's the person who picks their piece last and that encourages them to divide it as evenly as possible and so the veil of ignorance accomplishes pretty much the same thing if I don't know if I'm going to be born into a society that is where I'm you know this skin color or this economic group or whether or not we even have economic groups if you depending on how at what resolution you want to talk about society but if I don't know exactly who I'm going to be coming into the society and I set up rules it it's more likely that I'm going to set up rules that are as fair and equitable to everyone as possible and there's always going to be conflicts there's no easy solution but yeah that that is one of the driving forces determining how I make my decisions another one it goes along the lines of what would the world be like if everybody did this thing that I'm doing or thinking about doing you know with the world be generally better or worse off or neither quoting the memory control always works I like him guys thank you very much for your time appreciate it sure thanks thanks for calling Benjamin what Charles neat yeah highfalutin Tim and Rotterdam how are you I'm good thanks for waiting hi um I had a question about the differences between a six-tier society in Europe and a religious Society in the States where I have a lot of friends from the states that I talk to regularly and I have a lot of problems um like talking to them about how they view religion whereas in Holland I can just talk about whatever the I want but what what sort of problems I mean are they telling you to shut up that you're not allowed to talk about such things what what exactly is the problem you know did they just get really really uncomfortable yes welcome to my world yeah yeah it's you know what how I go about this I mean obviously we're doing a TV show but it's a call-in TV show not a call out TV show I'm not calling up churches and and people who were at church this morning to tell them about how I think they're wrong and in as I travel as I go about my day you know at work and out in public while I do have a number of atheist t-shirts and even an atheist tattoo and stuff I don't go around necessarily starting conversations for a long time when I was a believer toward the end of the time that I was a believer religion didn't play that big of a role in my life the period of time when I was in the Navy and early on working in the tech industry I believed but it didn't affect my daily life too much and there weren't a lot of about religion I actually find I have more conversations now about religion after doing this but I'm not usually the one that starts them but yeah people are going to get uncomfortable yeah it's yeah for me it's just hard because I basically I grew up just like Russell uh like I didn't grow up with any religion in my life and I started getting involved with it when I started to see the vent detrimental effects it has on society in my opinion and it's become a pretty big part of my life just thinking about it and so people ask me what I'm thinking about so I tell them and then the conversation just shuts down but maybe I should try to avoid it a little bit more do you not have religious people in the Netherlands oh yeah there are but and they never they never ask you what you're thinking and you tell them and then they get nervous no not so much because they see most of them religious people down here they say they're theists but basically they are deists there's just a really really small part of society that is actually hardcore theists yeah this basically like under a thousand persons in all the Netherlands yeah so and they're all together in our Bible Belt I think you probably have roughly the same reaction if you happen to talk to one of those people it's just there's a lot more of them over here or yeah you know it depends on how many fundamentalist there are because so one of the things that religion and I use religion I know it's not a monolithic thing I know Christianity is not one monolithic idea but I'm using shorthand religions are pretty good about building defense mechanisms and people and so there are people who have these just bizarre religious beliefs that don't you know as 6,000 year old earth and you know various miracles and ideas like this that just don't conform to anything that we understand in in the in the normal world that we the rest of his experience and when challenged on those ideas it's very difficult to present a rot logical rational case with evidence to support those beliefs and that's going to make people uncomfortable one of the mechanisms of course is the well you know God can do anything and you just don't understand or you haven't tried hard enough or you haven't experienced it or God doesn't want you to have evidence because that would destroy all that but the other mechanism is to get away from fundamentalist and literal spews and go towards a more theistic deistic view where oh yeah the bible is you know allegory and stuff that is there to teach us lessons or whatever religious texts we happen to be citing is not so much about facts about the supernatural world but teaching us things about ourselves and so when you remove all of those obviously nuts portions of religion and you're just left with this kind of moderate or liberal theology that says oh you know I I believe in a God and you know I can't quite understand it and I don't know all this other stuff but I you know I'm fine with you know evolution and science and all of it now all of a sudden it's it's not only more difficult to attack that or to attack the claims and show where they're clearly not true and so there's less to be bothered about or offended by and less concern on their part it's not the they don't gotta matically get nervous because they have a position that is almost unassailable yeah you actually just answered my second question cool I'm really Asian today yeah you are oh I have just one more quick note before I go um I would love to get in touch with you about me maybe translating the Sermon on the mountain uh like you did uh to Dutch the one on iron chariots org yeah go ahead I got to just create an account and create a language version of that page knock yourself out okay I will thanks much okay thanks bye bye bites him yeah so for those who who are aware several years ago Russell and I got together and and set up iron chariots org which is a counter apologetics wiki I'm no longer active on it just because I don't have enough time but there's a lot of information there including a kind of verse-by-verse deconstruction of the Sermon on the Mount that I put together some other people too added to it and edited but it's the bulk of it and les last I looked was still my thoughts on it because I got tired of hearing people including atheists talk about how this was a wonderful message that represented thinking that you know is far beyond what we would have expected from you know a bunch of first century individuals and I don't think so I mean I mean I mean there's a quote from Richard Dawkins where he talks about the nice things that are said in there and and he's right that there are some really nice things said during the Sermon on the Mount and there's also some bad things and some unhelpful things so wicked iron chariot org and do a search for Sermon on the Mount and you'll find my verse-by-verse take on it so we got Bryan Bryan in Boston how are you guys how you doing today good um I wanted to dress up devil watching the last six months or so and I'm not coming from a CSU or anything like that but I've I've been a philosopher for the last 15 years or so and it comes and I really have this issue with some when you when you refer to yourself as agnostic because it might be a fair assumption that I'm confusing you up for me yeah do you consider yourself an agnostic atheist depending on the definition of knowledge yes okay can we lincoln can i address this because I find it to be inherently contradictory then because uh I see feel that the distinction you guys give it that well you know that there's that there's no you can't prove that there's no God however a lack of a belief is therefore uh the only conclusion so it's you can have a non belief but then saying that non belief is Bulls agnostic and atheist it's redundant where am i well why would it be redundant if theism and atheism addressed belief and Gnosticism and agnosticism address knowledge and knowledge is a subset of belief then how can they possibly be in conflict well let me tell you uh I'm sure you're familiar with Socrates uh the Socrates thinking as submitted to the fact that beliefs when if it comes if it's not based on your knowledge you should believe should be your ignorance so as your ignorance is your belief that's a that would be your intellectually honest position we you can't just because you if you don't have the knowledge of something well in to be fair let me clarify period what do you think atheism is first because I think I found the confusion okay sure well I'm looking at the 2009 in cycling cycle event the Encyclopedia Britannica in 2009 it says here that it sides defined as a rejection of deity or deities sure and actually I would say that it would be rejection of the proposition that a deity or deities ists because rejection of deities could could include somebody who believes that God exists but rejects them on some other you know rejects worshiping them things like that so it's necessarily tied to believe okay but what why do you get my problem is you separate beliefs you shouldn't assume on that as a pursuit of knowledge and pursued well I don't care about I don't care about knowledge I don't care about what people claim is knowledge because we don't wait until we have knowledge of something to act upon it you act in accordance with your beliefs knowledge is a subset of beliefs and while it's nifty that we claim to know things it's more important what we actually believe or do not believe because that's all it takes to and for actions well that's my fault - my point we act from today because we have this form of pragmatism rather than principles we you you have you put you have basically a position here where you're saying you know that you're ignorant but you're to act against it accordingly seems to be I'm not I'm not wow you this is this whole thing of what I mean by agnostic atheism is something you can also find it iron chariot set org which is that theism is I believe a God exists atheism is I do not believe and then whether or not you identify yourself as a gnostic or agnostic theist or atheist depends on essentially the strength of the belief do you count this belief as knowledge and so saying I do not believe that a God exists and then putting the agnostic thing on there yes there's a potential conflict there because the the problem is that it would probably be there there's a disjunction between I do not believe and I don't know and they don't know is something that applies more accurately to the anti theist position and so it would be a gnostic anti theist I guess would be would be that so I don't know what like you know it's I don't normally put words in your mouth so let me clarify you guys do so do you actually that you know you accept the atheism to be the rejection though of deities just to simplify it you're the you said yourself the normative the normal definition that I use now is that atheism is the rejection of theistic claims okay that's that's a completely fair definition so what now that my problem comes down to this cognitive dissonance we have this what's define what we mean by belief versus uh what your head I don't know bully or belief is something that is based on in what I think they pass out appeal no but I believe when I say belief I mean belief is the acceptance of a proposition as true or likely true right that's it so if you're going so that is not a cognitive dissidence if you do not know but then you won't if you believe something that you don't know no okay um y-you can't correct me cuz I'm actually I don't need to I don't need to know something in order to believe it and what but then that's about why don't you have to buy it because that is it because that's exactly backwards you need to believe something in order to claim that you know it knowledge is a subset of belief so on this on this the example I used to use a courtroom sample let me try something completely different you ever seen one of those things where there is a a jar on a counter and it's full of like gumballs and they have a contest to see who can guess closest to the actual number of gumballs sure okay so as long as there's gumballs in that jar you and I would agree that the number of gumballs is either even or odd correct right evidently it would have to be yes okay so what's the default position on the number of gumballs the number of gumballs has a numerical number as a rat or as a rounded position as the mountain the quantity being the quantity of gumballs being either even or odd what's the default position the default position is neutral yes but if somebody asserts the number of gumballs in this jar I believe is even I'm the if I if I'm in the default position I disbelieve that assertion I do not accept that assertion I reject that assertion that doesn't mean that I think that the number is fault is is odd right because we only we only address a single prong of a dilemma at a time then I completely agree with this okay this is fundamentally logically concerted logic yes sure so either a God exists or it doesn't and a theist is is offering the proposition that a God exists gun number gum balls is even and I am rejecting their assertion theism is the acceptance of that position and atheism is the rejection of that position it's not the assertion that there are no gods no we saw the same page yes sir okay so I don't believe their assertion I also don't claim to know that their assertion is false this is where the disjunct was that I talked about because that that knowledge claim actually applies to the confusion that atheism is the assertion that there is no God fair enough speak then I will proceed smile on the air my my position that comes to the fact that there's a false paradigm there between Noel I know you take a lot of call call value now higher thinking and things like that yeah I normally don't even bother I don't even normally don't even bother to put the clarifying there I'm an atheist that makes sense somewhat myself as a considered a uh I would say Thomas Paine typed test what would wait see when you basically have the paradigm there when someone sets up as above I can have a Thomas Paine at you know that that isn't accurately reflecting or rejects both a Catholic you know the Catholics religion and Thomas Paine got uh who was a philosopher to make sense I'm not quite sure what you just said let me rephrase yeah I broke up a little bit okay Amadeus so this is where my problem comes in life everyone I don't agree with any theists religion I don't because I I only say that I am a date the fact that I can even define what a deity is a date is a date you get the concept of what Socrates says who are the basically that that everything must have a beginning and an end which means that after death that means there must be an exit east he said by you know process of elimination there must be something in between the consciousness going from life to death doesn't define what that is either but that's what you do everybody rejected the concept of but on God itself if you can't define what a thing is how can you say that you believe in it I say I put myself as a dance because it still it's on what closest label I can give to myself to saying I die they believe that there's more not there's something else there that is beyond the possibility of a human perception and I only say that because the fact that so many perceptions out there that are beyond our current logical science scientific reach lets you but but you don't claim to be able to know for act one way or the other right uh you can you can only know the fact that things like x-rays 200 years ago what does more it wasn't a visible light visible light spectrum so what does yes or not Brian how is that not just a massive argument from ignorance there are things that we don't know and thus I'm going to conclude that there's something bigger than us which I'm going to label a deity oh no I apologize because I can't define it I can't defy the deity I always say that there's things that we do not know and by know it by saying we do not know them is that they said the overwhelming evidence is something else will become a negate in that definition yes if you don't define it as a deity then how why are you calling yourself a deist why not just say there are some things we don't know we know you mat night here no there's things we don't know lots of probably great big important major you know things but what's more is by asserting or trying to put a label on it and trying to categorize it you're claiming to know something about that which you don't know because it could be wrong so I mean there may not be actually any sort of like if we're talking about intellect there may not be any sort of intellect beyond our own or greater than our own there's no reason to think that that the idea of some sort of transcendent being or a being that exists outside space and time is even a coherent concept and so when we say there are things we don't know that's fine and that should be a full stop because when you start making claims about the nature of things that we don't know in order to justify a label I think you've gone kind of off the deep end you're right and that's that's the thing I try to explain this myself to a point you have to give yourself some sort of category because I can't define myself in it one specific area because Socrates said you know did why this man of all was the person that admitted that he knew absolutely nothing so that that was my central point here I know that I know absolutely nothing and that was that's why I can't be an atheist northeast hence why Dave there is no other option you're either a theist or an atheist there are no other options you either believe in a get some gods or you don't but I don't but I don't do either because I actually choose to actually have ignorance I believe am ignorant if you enjoy me wanna be God if you don't believe if you do not actively believe in any gods you are an atheist that is what atheism is not believe in God with rejection God yeah it's a rejection of the claims of gods in scene I'm not saying that it's a go ahead sorry that rejection is rejection of arguments right if no argument has been presented to you that there is a God which you have accepted then you do not believe and you don't believe in any gods of your own you haven't made up your own definition and believe that right if you're left without a belief an active belief that there are is a God or or more then you don't believe in any gods and that is when an atheist is you either accept the claim that the number of gumballs is even or you reject the claim and those are the only two options with respect to that single claim and the same is true for the existence of God you either accept this claim that God exists in which case you're a theist or you reject that claim in which case you're an atheist you've seen when you withhold when you would hold it or know it as you know it hold there's no withhold if you you I would reject you either accept the claim or you do not they're all that's the only - for any single proposition there are only two possibilities you either accept the proposition or you do not accept the proposition when you do not accept it now you don't necessarily reject that is a rejection that means exactly the same thing and now we're arguing over words I don't want to go in a circle here I apologize because I would think we're on the page I just want to get that last point in there well the later is when you start saying Greer this is you start saying that you're neither a theist or an atheist and I've already defined these as the only two options with with respect to a single claim when you start saying that you're something else now you've divided this into more than one prong of an argument like I said earlier you were addressing a single prong that is the claim that a God exists let me ask let me propose it in a similar fashion and let me show you why it's accurate the whole withhold you believe now we know about the visible life I'm okay with Holdings I'm okay with withholding belief I'm saying that that is rejecting the claim I am reporting that I am withholding my acceptance right it's the same you're like holding your acceptance when you reject it and later comes out to be true then Heron tu are intellectually dishonest to go back to the claim that later turned out to compete you know no because rejecting the claim is not asserting that it is false and even if it was people are allowed to change their minds oh that's what I that's what the confusion is exact thank you but I don't know I don't have when you reject it you don't define it as actually claiming it to be false that I've said that five times I've said if I use the gumball example to say that if I don't accept that it's true and it's even that I am NOT asserting that it's false if I don't accept that a God exists that does not mean that I'm asserting that God doesn't exist I said this three or four times and I'm hearing you and then I'm actually trying to understand actually they're going to get an education yeah I do I'm not trying to actually hit on it no I just thought you got it and then when you came back with this anyway go ahead no I know it's not that it's this my good goes down these core definitions here so when you say reject you are actually saying that is similar or to withholding a belief or having a lack of a belief these are all almost deafening 'dom that can be interchanged sir okay so when we have a destiny end on rejection you are saying rejection is not saying looking at a claim in saying no this is false you are actually saying I don't I do not think it is true it is the opposite of accept that thought that it is not it is not the assertion of the contrary okay thank you that's all I need cool thanks Brian all right I'm going I guess I just go straight to philosophical debt see we're so used to doing a program that's kind of colloquial accessible um and I ride this line between trying to make things that people understand which do I come up with gumball examples and stuff like that is a highfalutin philosophical show today and that's fine let's just accept that and move on yeah ac grayling Ling come over and just well I was gonna say he'd smack me but he's like the nicest man on the planet I'd say we're just gonna kind of look at me mildly disapproving at this point I'm sure why didn't you just say that to begin with Martin and Munich thanks for waiting oh hey excellent thanks taking my call I've listened to you guys for a while now and I my wife has just also started them watching on the YouTube I would like she used to be a Southern Methodist and I've been an atheist all my life and when we met she thought I was a devil and she would like but she didn't - see there were in Munich and she's like a bad-boy thing you said when you met she thought you were the devil and somehow she's kept hanging out with you is this a and attracted to the bad boy you know I don't know I've never really gotten that however I just kind of accepted it went with it because uh she's pretty awesome so she has been watching your show and she was thinking of what was it two weeks ago she was thinking about how you or how she used to feel when she was in church when she was a kid she wants to I would like to read this from her it's two paragraphs and what she wants to stay she wants to pass this on to your to the listeners if that would be okay well as long as they're not like 12 page paragraphs go ahead oh no no no literally like one minute okay go ahead most okay excellent Thanks so after watching a few of the Atheist Experience episodes last weekend I started to rattle off on my to my husband about my life growing up as a southern methodist church goer I never really felt like I belonged it was always a sense of going through the motions the only real part I liked was singing or playing the piano for the congregation the rest was dull and mostly dispassionate I did however feel some guilt because I never wanted to publicly publicly display my renewed salvation in Christ even after the come on down speech at the end of every service inviting all to join the pastor at the altar and show the world how God has moved you to become born-again i sat uncomfortably in the pew counting down the minutes until noon when they would finally wrap it up and I was off the hook for another week but somehow at least a couple of times a Holy Spirit quote unquote did move me and now looking back as a newly unveiled atheist I can rationally explain how I did and perhaps others did or do experience the Holy Spirit quote-unquote I can only explain it as myself finally letting go of all the anxiety and doubt the inability to feel connected and the lack of belonging I quit asking questions and release my mind from the confines of my rational prison I didn't have to try to explain myself anymore to myself anymore the meaning of anything in the Bible it was one huge ah moment I relaxed and allowed myself to succumb to all that was said to me and I believe suddenly fully that Jesus Christ was my personal Savior and I was going to be in heaven one day shaking hands with this fellow a warm wave rolled over my body and for a few brief moments I was totally elated and at peace feeling the Holy Spirit for me was letting go and allowing myself to be convinced which brought peace not having to fight my rational thoughts anymore I was totally relieved I thought this would this could possibly explain the sensation others have when they have a quote-unquote miraculous experience and say that they have found Christ or God or whomever although I have never won the lottery I could imagine this might provoke or invoke similar responses you can imply the metaphor yourselves you have just realized that you won't have any financial worries for the rest of your life and all your problems will be solved you are in a state of delirium and bliss albeit a pseudo sensation and the reason why I say I felt it I felt it more than once it's probably because i lapsed a few times in my belief so next time you are in a room with fray comfort he is telling you that once you accept Jesus he would reveal himself to you know that instead it is finally you letting go of your consciousness and accepting only a false security brought on by emotions which you choose not to control yeah that's it did you when in your church-going experience yep did you experience that no no yeah did I I had all the other stuff she was describing the the mindless tedium and looking at my watch ready for it to be over as soon as possible yeah I I actually did and this this kind of confuses some people particularly Christians who are like I don't know how could you have experiences and it's I won't I won't claim them you know obviously we can go back to the first call on my experiences my own and you guys can't can't know it or verify it or it may be different but I remember particularly during prayer during the music more so than sermons or whenever one of the things about revival preachers and how they tend to affect people emotionally is that they are amazingly good speakers that get into these rhythms and type into emotions and stuff and so I felt something and of course I'm surrounded by a whole bunch of people who think they're who are experiencing something as well and they're all saying that what they experience is the Holy Spirit and so it becomes true in my mind that I whatever I'm experiencing is the same as theirs and so I'm going to call the Holy Spirit to now even though I have no reason at all to think that what I'm experiencing is attributed to some supernatural force let alone a specific one I have no justification for that but because everybody around me is having the same experience in calling it the Holy Spirit that I begin to say that too and now I'm just another voice in the crowd attributing a source to this feeling well after I gave up my religious beliefs and this was something that I struggled with was this idea and your wife might have struggle with as well although she seems to come out just fine with a really kind of rational look at this I discovered that I have said this before so I won't have to mince words I have experienced a similar feeling from sex drugs secular music that I'm not to enjoy movies nature yep this sort of euphoric feeling and it's one of the reasons why you see religion talking about love and peace and stuff because when I'm out enjoying something or when I'm in love or when I'm experiencing this peace that is when I feel a sensation a similar now are they identical no but I don't think that they're distinct enough to come to the conclusion that what happens in church must be some dramatically different external supernatural force especially since it is experienced irrespective of the beliefs and tenets of a particular Church you say this is the same euphoria in the voodoo practitioners that are dancing around and people will lose their mind and we knew about this ages ago there's the the book on extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds back in the 19th century yep realizing this and teaching people about this I think is far more important than discovering like the experiments with the god helmet where they can induce a religious experiment experience in some people you know I don't want to recommend that people take your legal drugs so you know maybe go to Colorado or Washington or someplace like that I'm not I'm not a big fan of it but in any case there's you can experience in so many different ways pick your favorite music and have sex to it you're as close to God as you're ever going to get in my book or yeah it's it those three things you know the sex food and the acai in it or a passion for something you know be it music or film or whatever I mean who's gotten lost in a movie and been you know moved to tears by a movie yeah you know it's the same thing and I just I thought it was a pretty I'm a woman wife's very rational and I don't know why from the very beginning and I'm ass cracks I know um why she actually went out with me on the side I think I can tell you I mean given what she was saying she was obviously she spent most of her life going through church waiting for it to get over and so right you know having having been in a similar position at some point I think that there were probably nagging doubts and engaging with some who obviously and strongly disagreed with her on this thing that she was doubting might have been very appealing yeah plus you're probably cute I like to think so at least thanks for the time I'll let you get to another color before the show ends sure thanks I enjoy the show thanks guys thanks Martin we probably have time for one not that one oh hey George yes sir goodbye alright sit so he's George's upset and thinks we owe him an apology I'm gonna call him tell me why I need shirt or that I need Church and not tell me why and then go into you're upset because eighth graders are watching the show first of all I don't believe you but even if it's true tough where does anybody get the idea that we have a responsibility to give them airtime on our show hey you know what you know what you know you're bothered that eighth graders are watching the show I'm bothered that you guys are teaching this stuff to kids from before they can speak I'll take the eighth grader cat Minneapolis how are you hi yeah and by the way shout out to all those eighth graders out there watching us yeah welcome to show be a rebel I can see I guess I can't have the negative that to what just a flat color I really want to be champion I'm an atheist I found out and I thought was perfect to choose if it was somebody in my life who is appear because what he sent me is that you know no matter how is if it's death really gonna point what to think except so just keep yeah at me I'm right at ya I'm sorry but whatever phone you're on is breaking up to where I can't tell really what you're saying okay one key is sir let's try one more time okay um so I have a theist friend who basically said to me I want to I want to talk about what I'm thinking and no matter how uncomfortable it gets just keep coming at me basically and I thought that was kind of a really good situation because it was somebody who is open hearing what I would say but what wound up happening is he kind of had a nervous breakdown that lasted for several days until he had gotten enough distance to kind of put his belief back together again and so now I almost want to avoid conversations with this even if they tell me that they want to have these conversations because I felt really horrible about that so I don't know how to approach these kinds of conversations or even if there is any kind of conversation that can end i with as he is changing their mind without going crazy potentially well it does happen yeah and definitely don't do anything you're uncomfortable with and I might be giving George a nervous breakdown at the moment right now cuz you know being hung up on twice in one show yeah I don't know you get advice uh yeah yeah there's no you're under no obligation to do anything that you find uncomfortable you know yeah that's being an atheist is not does not put an obligation on you to you know hunt down Christians and corner them and debate them into submission it looks like a whole lot of fun and sometimes it is but if you don't want to you don't have to and that's perfectly okay you can just make that call yeah I just um I was hoping it had done it would have done better because he actually approached me for that conversation yeah and it makes me wonder how do I even have conversations with you that are going to end well I've been a prize was approached twice this past week on Facebook by Christians and I just kept telling them what I thought until they couldn't take it anymore what and on that note we're fall out of time they've run in the credits on us thanks everybody for watching thanks Jeff showing up today and having a good time with us yep we'll be back next week I think Russell's it might be on next week but my why bye folks how

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 151,885

Rating: 4.7584443 out of 5

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

Id: Ek4M1trIYr8

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

"Comments are disabled for this video."

?! I love reading the debates that usually follow in this video series.

[u/Cincinnaudi]

No upload for episode 809 from today though on either Ustream or Youtube. :(

EDIT - HERE IT IS