Atheist Town Hall

[Music] [Music] hi I'm Dan Barker co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation today on Facebook live we're doing another FFRF ask an atheist free-for-all Annie Laurie Gaylor who's also co-president is here today in the Steven Ewell Friendly Atheist studio in Madison Wisconsin and so was Andrew Seidel FFRF director of strategic response and maybe he'll tell us what that actually means in a few minutes we're going to respond to some of the ask an atheist questions that Andrew was asked at the farmers market on the State Capitol Square but if you have a question for us any time during today's show you can ask it right here in the facebook comments or you can send an email to ask an atheist at FFRF dot org but before we do any of that we want to kick off the show with FFRF first atheist town hall so annie laurie maybe you can set up what we're gonna see here yes at the last convention that we had in September we held the first secular townhall and this was emceed by cara santa maria who is an award-winning science reporter a blogger she has a podcast called talk nerdy with Santa Maria Clara nerdy talk tardy with Cara Santa Maria and we assembled I think it was about 16 or 18 diverse free thinkers who are attending our convention of different ages and backgrounds we had a physician we had a midwife professor a lot of students and they were asked questions about what they think about and it was the first ever atheist or secular townhall and it it's only about six or seven minutes it's really fun to watch so we're gonna play that now hi everyone and welcome to the first ever Freedom From Religion Foundation Giller townhall my name is Cara Santa Maria and I'll be moderating along with this incredible group of individuals from all over the country we're gonna hear what these secular Americans are passionate about let's begin I want to start by asking you guys a question how many of you identify as an atheist almost all of you Ingrid you were born with no religion what was that experience like I think it's like every baby born on the planet I'm a midwife and I catch babies for a living and I think every single when I catch is an atheist I am loud and proud as an atheist now but have only been able to feel safe in that for the last 10 years or so and that's because the country has changed and now I feel as free as those babies Stephen why are you proud to be an atheist I think that the group that we see here at FFRF is an amazing collection of artists and poets and scientists and writers and some of the greatest minds of the world and to just be involved with those discussions is enlightening you're an African American atheist which means that in some respects you're a minority within a minority what do you say to your cultural group who questions your lack of religion I was definitely raised with the very religious upbringing and there is definitely some tension with my family partially my grandparents when I came out as atheist and there was some I think just lack of information about the entire community and I I told them that you know with the stereotypes that go along with it who would we be if we were to give in same stereotypes and so it's kind of hard for people to put me into a box which I think shouldn't happen in the first place what are some of the worst Aereo types that you've heard about atheists they're just immoral people they often confuse us with Satanists which we're definitely not if we don't believe in God we certainly don't believe in his enemy the secular demographic is the fastest-growing in America yet the religious right controls all three branches of government and there are no open atheist serving in Congress why do you think it's so hard for an atheist to get elected in this country there's tons of polling showing where the least trusted minority in the country so it's just currently political suicide for you to be open about your non-religious views if you want to get into politics but I think that's changing as the demographics are changing then do you think that there are politicians who are actually atheist but haven't said that out loud who are serving right now yeah I think that's almost certainly the case if you look at the trends that are associated with atheism one of them is just being a more highly educated person so it's just statistically inevitable that some of the people who are currently in elected office some of them are certainly atheist but they're just too afraid to be honest about it because they want to get reelected would we be a more peaceful society if there were no religion why I certainly believe that's true if our decisions were made based on logic reason facts science instead of the irrationality of a lot of religious practices I think things would go much more smoothly I think that's unrealistic unfortunately people are there people are brainwashed in the religious doctrine at such an early time in life from the very beginning that getting getting the majority of people back out of that mindset is very difficult Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has said she wants to convert public schools in America to God's kingdom and of course the Trump administration has pledged twenty billion dollars to spread taxpayer-funded voucher schools across the country how does this make you feel as a parent of kids in the public school system it concerns me on so many levels one of them being that are you know is she going to try and put God into the public schooling that my secular kids have to go to or is she gonna take money from my secular kids school and put it into funding religious schools for other kids either way it's not a good option and something that I'm definitely against what would you do if you found out that a teacher telling your kids your grandkids that the earth is only six thousand years old and dinosaurs walked alongside humans I would certainly file a complaint with the Freedom From Religion Foundation to have some resources to have this not happen to other children and in other classrooms we all know the earth is seven thousand years old do you think more and more people are moving away from religion because the technology in their pockets allows them to just easily debunk things like creationism yeah definitely I think that's part of it I think a major reason that people have historically needed religion is to answer questions that they could not possibly know so I think that technology is replacing a lot of these like mysterious questions you can just ask Google anything and then also we just live in a world where we were able to create Google like we're just more intelligent general God isn't as necessary anymore Mike do you think that God is being replaced by technology I think that the technology is just helping that to happen helping people to be able to get more information than they could before it's you know the Internet is the modern printing press that people didn't know it was possible to be an atheist didn't know that groups like this existed didn't have access to science information science shows and I think that the internet is helping more and more people come to that conclusion than they probably did before why do you think Millennials have stopped going to church well I think that a lot of Millennials on social issues for example LGBTQ rights they are very supportive of full equality and marriage equality religion has historically showed a lot of hate towards those groups that Millennials see as love Cassady how do you get your morals as an atheist that's such a funny question because I don't think I ever got my morals from religion even when I was like a religious kid like you have your parents telling you like don't hit like be nice share and then you go to church and it's like a man should not spill his seed on the floor instead of in his wife so it's just confusing to me when people where I get my morals from because it was not Church do you think that a belief in creationism and in the afterlife makes people think that they don't really need to protect the planet if you believe that really our time on Earth is just a small little blip compared to our time with God and that God created the universe perfectly then we have no real obligation to protect the planet because we're going to go to some paradise and the earth is how God wants it anyway climate change in all which to me is the logic of a psychopath can can you share a little bit about your story and in your fight to remove the Ten Commandments I'm sure there was a large Ten Commandments monument in front of my daughter's public high school it had been there for over 60 years I noticed that she would be having to walk under that shadow every single day so we brought the lawsuit while she was in middle school the Freedom From Religion Foundation and I started the lawsuit in 2012 and it took all of five years to eventually have the two thousand pound monument removed I want to thank the Freedom From Religion Foundation for organizing this secular townhall the Freedom From Religion Foundation is the oldest free thought organization in America they've been fighting for the separation of church and state for 40 years you can learn more by reading their newspaper free thought today listening to their podcast free thought radio and of course their new youtube series ask an atheist I urge you to go to WWF fr-s org to learn more about their groundbreaking legal work to promote the First Amendment I'm Cara Santa Maria I host the talk nerdy podcast and co-host the skeptics guide to the universe I want to thank all of you for participating in this secular townhall [Music] [Music] well that was fun a roomful of atheist and she got to ask them tons of questions and Andrew you didn't do it inside of a room you actually went outside that the state capital and you didn't know if they were atheists or not it was an ask an atheist booth that you had set up so we have some of those what are we gonna see here well it was a little bit kind of like a carnival atmosphere you know I was out at the farmers market which i think is the largest in the country telling people that they could come and ask an atheist any question they wanted you know there there are these sort of big misconceptions out there that people have about atheists and we thought we would see if people would ask us any question that was on their mind about us no matter how offensive I said just bring it on and we filmed some of them well let's bring it on in I would like to understand why Americans have so much difficulty equating ethics and morality with atheism it's as if if you're not religious you cannot be as they call or more and that to me is manifesting and nonsense so yeah we get to ask that all the time because there's this assumption that if it's religious it's good religion is goodness and morality and if you don't have any moral anchor or moral compass you can't be a good person so how do either of you responded well first I was delighted to see that question I hadn't seen that before and somebody from the UK where there are even more seculars than in this country and it must be very frustrating to come to this country and be confronted with religious bigotry that you can't be a good person without a God and this is the biggest Bugaboo that the secular movement freethinkers face and we think that not only can you be good without God you can be better without God because it's top-down Authority it's not based on consequences it's based on master/slave relationship you have you have to do this or you'll go to hell or if I if you please me you'll go to heaven and that's kind of a bankrupt philosophy I mean if you believe that there is a God telling you to do something you're going to obey that God no matter what the consequences this is why the suicide bombing community is entirely religious as Hitchens used to point out and to me it's if you have a hard time discerning right from wrong it's not that you lack religion it's that you lack either empathy or reason that's that's the problem there for me so you both use the word consequences instead of Commandments so how do you know if the consequences are moral or good or not well but by their by by what happens the consequence to human beings to our planet I don't just like to talk about humanism I mean look at the climate change situation that we're all confronting where we don't care about the future for the planet and it's going to do us in so you look at the consequences of your actions and are they good or are they bad not based on whether they're good or bad on the Bible but on what they really do for Humanity so what is good or bad actually me your mom had a hand shorthand for this didn't she basing your actions on reason and kindness pretty much sums it up nicely and Dan you're the one who likes to debate what what's good I was I was asked that question is debated a huge mega Church in Charlotte North Carolina a couple of weeks ago what he is how you a theist can't decide what good is and my answer basically is the kind of utilitarian or negative utilitarian answer the simply harm if something causes unnecessary harm we call that bad so the endeavor of eliminating or minimizing real harm in the real world that's what we call it good you don't need a list of rules as you say we look at the consequences oh it does this cause more harm than this and it's a simple rule that you can use to guide your moral lives and also I think that the real harm of religion is it tends to place Dogma above people in humanity and as Steven Weinberg famously said the Nobel laureate physicists good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things but for good people to do bad things that takes religion I think that's the best the best summation of the argument and then just looking at people's lives atheists are just as good no worse authors there's some bad atheist but there's a lot of bad Christians too so we should judge people not by their beliefs but by their actions I think we've got some more questions what's wrong with just pretending to believe in God and Christianity and just following following the Bible and living as a Christian even if you don't believe because that way you'll get to go to heaven so what's wrong with pretending to believe in Christianity so that you can get to heaven I mean right off the bat I think if there is a God and he knows that you're pretending to believe in him I don't know I don't know why that but also be true to yourself I mean you shouldn't pretend to be something that you're not and especially shouldn't live your entire life pretending to be something that you're not and I have to wonder who somebody would really be pretending for know I I find it hard to believe that they would be pretending for themselves for this kind of eternal reward I kind of get the sense that they might be pretending to make things easier either on other people in their family or just generally all get along exactly and and to me that's nothing is worth sacrificing yourself and who you are as a person just to get along and also he said why not go along with Christianity in the Bible and that opens up a whole cesspool what's wrong with Christianity the history of Christianity and what's wrong with the Bible and it's significant the Bible has a couple of good little teachings in it but nothing special the golden rule had been said before and had been said better by Confucius but this is basically Pascal's wager isn't then you you've done must have done this a hundred times yeah yeah because what you're trying to do you're trying to avoid harm and you should you should go ahead and believe because what if you're wrong you might suffer eternal judgment and eternal hell which basically boils down to an argument from intimidation is all it is it's a force argument you better believe otherwise it's like Daddy saying you do what I say or you're gonna get spanked right and I think the God of the Old Testament is like that I don't think the God of the Old Testament cares if you're pretending or not all he wants is obedience okay if you don't have to love me you just have to obey me and then you get what you get okay but I would say that when your father stands over you with that strap and that's something the Bible suggests corporal punishment there really is a strap there really is a dad yeah but there really isn't a guy and as you have often pointed out in your debates then what's to keep this God from not saying well you believed in the wrong God I i I'm Allah and you're gonna go to hell anyway there's a capricious god like that yeah and that's the problem with Pascal's wager I think you have to apply it to every really out there and that means you have to believe in these mutually exclusive systems and it's just it's not possible to even complete Pascal's wager because the Muslim hell is worse than the Christian hell and what if you die someday and realize you picked the wrong God shouldn't you pick with that kind of thinking you should find the religion that has the worst hell in it and then that's the religion you should believe is that's where you have the most to lose from all of that any system of thought like that that has to make its point by threatening violence is morally bankrupt we should be basing on morality on the consequences in the harm and the goodness to human beings so I guess we're ready for another question no that's good my question is why is the Bible in so many fairy tales so full of powerless women good question and nice to get that question from a woman and of course the Bible only about 10% of the Bible has women in it and most of them are nameless and I have written a whole book about Bible sexism woe to the women the Bible tells me so and the Bible is really a handbook for women's subjugation it's patriarchal how many Bible were written by women well well I mean we don't know who wrote any of them really but they're not named by theirs you know the couple are named for women and Esther is a kind of violent handmaid for four and then Ruth is a doormat but so this Bible is teaching a master/slave relationship where there's God first and then Jesus and the man and then woman and so and I can't really speak for fairytales it's a patriarchal world but I did want to say that we have something that we can say hallelujah about today regarding women and religion and that is that the seventeen-year-old who was in captivity by our government by our Department of Justice the immigrant who was pregnant who got to our country when she was about 11 weeks pregnant and has been denied an abortion all these weeks finally this morning thanks to the ACLU got her abortion at 15 weeks and this is the harm of the Trump administration a theocracy of dunces where he has filled the Justice Department and Health and Human Services with fanatics Christian fanatics who really do believe in the Handmaid's Tale and they treated this is like what happens in some of these Catholic nations like Guatemala where abortion is illegal and it had to go all the way up to the court of appeals in DC and it was six to three not even a unanimous decision and one of the women on that panel so gee we don't want all these pregnant immigrants coming to this country to have an abortion well first of all that wasn't her reason a lot of them get raped on the way over in these horrible arduous tracks but of course abortion is legal we should welcome anyone who wants to come to this country to get illegal abortion and this is exactly what happens in England where abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland and women go over from Ireland all the time to the UK through England to have abortions imagine if they treated the Irish women like our government is saying saying it would treat anybody coming to our country this was a horrible indictment it's frightening that this could have happened we should all be up in arms over this and should never happen again and undoubtedly it's happened already because of all of the children coming over the minors getting into the clutches of our immigration there in Texas and what's weird about this I think is that this does show the harm of religion over women and women's choices but the Bible doesn't actually say anything at all about abortion itself the Bible never once discusses the problem of an unwanted pregnancy women were property as you know in your book you wrote women were property women were ranked with the slaves and the cattle and the other property that you had and so really it was a patriarchal mindset that no woman should be able to control her own life well we did a whole ask an atheist about about what the Bible says about abortion which is zero the is profoundly misogynist and you'd be hard-pressed to find a book that it finds human life as cheap as the Bible yes so well thank you for that question and then I think we've got another one how did the few control the masses without religion how did the few who control the masses without really I think that I think that's a cynical question I think he's trying to say that religion has been used by those in power to control the masses and Napoleon even said what a useful tool religion was to control the masses so I assume Subin has a great quote in a the rise and fall of the Roman Empire he says that the people of all the religions the people thought them equally true the philosophers equally false and the magistrate equally useful and yeah I mean religion has been a tool the usefulness of religion in keeping people enslaved for example we saw that in our go change change with well I don't know that the Africans Americans were at all glad of their but the that holy book which sanctioned slavery was used to keep slaves docile promising them pie in the sky and it was used by the slave masters and the churches to completely justify that horrible system that we're still you know seeing the need for reparations for and that question of course assumes that we should want to control the masses right from a top-down kind of thing in our country where we have we the people are bottom-up it's not it's not the leader who controls the masses it's really the masses who can run our country in in theory down yeah I don't think in practice at the moment well yeah but I think that he was being oh yeah I know it was giving a devil's advocate question it was a very interesting question there have been ways to control mass if you want to do that not that you should but you can do it without religion look at some of these other tyrannical regimes that just did it with force in with Maya look at how the Nazis invaded and occupied and used the phone he had God meet God with us on their buckle of their Bible Belt so there was a religious crusade but if you can add into the mix that religion you can get hold of people's psyche yeah through religion and subjugate them you're so much more power but I don't think the French felt the Germans having got on their side allowed them to be controlled I think they were being just forcibly occupied I think maybe another way of saying is there are several tactics you can use to control people fear is a very good tactic for controlling people division dividing people divide and conquer is another very good tactic and religion is good at bringing a bunch of those together right yeah I think so maybe it's just it's a system that is particularly good at utilizing all these different forms of control well that's gloria steinem once said when I interviewed her I don't know where else she said it but we quote it at our website she said what other system of thought reaches beyond the grave to try to control you know maybe the question or a minute Catholic masses and in that case how do you control a Catholic Mass without religion I think there's another question how do you talk about being an atheist with your family or some family members who may not be atheists maybe religious so how do you talk about religion with your family members I kind of I like to keep two things in my head when I'm talking with people who I know are friendly I like to remind myself that people who are believers are not stupid I think there's an often a tendency especially this tends to happen more online I think with atheists where the the conversation can degenerate very quickly into well you're just you're just stupid for believing that and I think that that's very very counterproductive all right and the other thing I think is good to keep in mind is that these are just bad ideas that these people believe you know they can just they can change their mind like that and like Dan did and all of a sudden you know they're they're no longer a believer and you didn't gain 20 points overnight 20 IQ points overnight when you became a non-believer did you you just changed your mind 30 or 40 30 or 40 okay yeah took a while but yeah you're right I think most there are some stupid believers I mean obviously yes there's probably some stupid atheist I don't know any but I'm sure there must be but and it's still good to remind yourself that you know it doesn't help in the conversation to think of them in that way yeah because nobody wants to be ridiculed and put down no one wants to be talk baby talk down to your sausage - you want to be respected if you're gonna have any dialogue at all with somebody it should be a horizontal respectful dialogue and if they shut the door on you well then that's their problem but we can keep it open and in my family's case I told my mom and dad and I sent a one-page letter to everybody and we talked and we dialogue and for a while my dad started writing letters to try to argue me out of my atheism but it backfired and then eventually my mom became an atheist after Sunday school teacher first years and then then my dad about a year later they both said yeah yeah Danny's right so then so we talked we kept it open and we like each other I was lucky that in my family we had a genuine even with our differences we had a genuine respect for each other and you have to have that or you're not gonna have a real good dialogue well you do have some religious relatives that certainly have not D converted among them one of your brothers but they didn't really want to have that dialogue no they're not open to the dialogue there's just not much but I think he knows that it's open I think he knows it's I'm not belittling him I'm not bad-mouthing him I'm you know you like you said and you can talk about that bad ideas without saying that people are bad and I think we would say that about any religion you know Islam as a as a horrible religion based on a irrational book but most Muslims are good people most of them are really just decent human beings well as you've often said usually religionists are much better than their religion at least when we're no longer in the dark ages they've evolved past their religion so I guess it's there's no no one answer how you can talk with family it depends on your family yeah I remember the one of the first questions that I was asked was so you don't believe in anything no I believe in lots of things friendship and love and good food all kinds of things I just don't believe there's a god there's not enough evidence to suggest that I mean so I think there are a lot of misconceptions that people have out there and by being you know willing to talk about it and open like you really can have a big impact on on your family's outlook not even if they don't Deacon vert you know just breaking down those stereotypes about atheists and I think this person was asking how do you do it and in my case and I think you're also recommending that we not be pushy preachy about it we're not trying to like your mom used to say we're not going into churches and dragging people out of the pews and telling them how dumb they're we're allowing that freedom and where we're saying hey the door is open if you want to talk that's fine with me at least I would say to this question or at least let them know that you don't agree at least do the minimal without having to be so you know sometimes you can protest too much you can feel like everybody's got to think like me or I you know you can show your own insecurities but yeah and maybe one good way to think about that too is you know people don't change their minds like that you know it's it's how long a process was it for you about four years five years yeah so you know you can be you should be comfortable just addressing their question or sowing a little seed of doubt and letting it grow and not worrying about changing somebody's mind overnight yeah well I think is there one more question I'm wondering if for those atheists who became atheists later in life and who were brought up in a religion if there are ever times of self questioning doubt and maybe even fear about what might come after death well Dan I think that's your question yeah and fear is a good word because the Bible is full of it the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom the beginning of knowledge and it really is a fear-based religion and look at most fundamentalist types and there's a lot of liberal believers who don't have that mindset but most fundamentalist evangelical types they really are afraid of judgment afraid of Hell afraid of disapproval of the of the dictator and fear is an emotion and if you raised your whole life like this woman is asking your whole life with this kind of ingrained fear in your mind you don't just snap out of that overnight you can take with me it took about a year it's a rebuild and to get rid of those knee-jerk kind of things that happened in your brain and maybe with some people it takes longer or maybe some do it more quickly it's similar to what happens when there's any huge change in your life like maybe a divorce or a death in the family or something it takes you about a year for your brain to get used to that and so I guess I would suggest to this woman that just it'll get better you might have these sort of residual fears and emotions but it does get better as you get past at all well I remember down when you gave the first talk to the Freedom From Religion Foundation which was 85 1985 I think you were we called you a little baby 1884 in Milwaukee you'd really out of the closet for a year or something and somebody you gave your talk and you still sounded a tiny bit nostalgic I think you just were so immersed in fundamentalism you know somebody asked you from the audience well it's you do think you're going to go back and you responded well when you turn off on the light are you gonna turn it off again so pretty hard to do that you remember what I said 33 years ago I do amazing impression and so you were very very immersed in the fundamentalism but that's not gonna the emotions are not going to get away in the way of your reasoning I've talked with several atheists who like you there they're confident in the conclusion of their atheism but there they are still not afraid of hell but they still have those feelings that you were talking about you know one of them used to tell me that he would wake up from nightmares still you know and this is 15 years after after being indoctrinated as a young kid you know you have those those visions and those descriptions of hell that can be really gruesome and they would still scare them out of their sleep occasionally but didn't believe in it at all yeah I think to talk about how but Dan you also had talked about when you were going through this process I know you you've written about in some of your books but that you felt at first that giving up religion would kind of be like spitting on your mother you know that there was this idea of the blasphemous or so disloyal to your whole family so how did you think your way out of that yeah I was like spitting on a grandma I was like you know and I think anybody who's raised in a religious culture or maybe even ethnic identity or whatever when you leave that it's almost like you're betraying your whole heritage your whole background and going to church with my grandparents and singing hymns with them and now that I'm leaving that it felt like you know it felt like a real betrayal and I had to try to explain to them I still love you and I care about you and I remember my grandma once wrote me a letter saying I saw you on TV I think she saw one of those Donahue shows I saw you on TV but that wasn't our Danny on the TV that was not our Danny on the show and actually she was kind of right you know because you are abandoning a lot of these values that they think of real and this hard psychologically to do were tribal animals were social animals were family animals and when you change that your brain everything just like you're off balance for a while so was that Marie yeah grandma Marie so and you also tell that story about how they struggled their whole lives and worked very hard and sacrificed to give money to the Billy Graham yeah it was very sad yeah we didn't need it they were they were middle-class to lower middle class doing okay but didn't have a lot of money and I saw their wreck after granddad died I saw their years of donations to Billy $50 a month to the Billy who didn't need it Billy Graham did not mean it so I guess they thought they were doing it for God and they were doing the right thing would have been better to vest in their grandchildren yeah if they put that money in the bank over those I didn't something that improved the world but yeah so they were victims but they were good people they were dead they had good motors they wanted to do the right thing and when you come out as an atheist from that family community it almost feels like you are dissing them as people when you're not and they probably feel that same way like well why are you you know why are you saying we're bad we're not saying they're bad we're saying that ideas are bad well and then I think that shows the harm of religion it's highly divisive it and break apart families it can lead to shunning people who should enjoy each other who can't have a conversation so another reason why we like to imagine no religion at the Freedom From Religion Foundation and do we have any questions we do we have a question from Amy Amy asks do you think you can be both an atheist and an agnostic a little of both can you think there is no god but also say you can't know for certain we talk about this all the time we do yes it's kind of like asking can you be an American and a Democrat you know I mean like there are two different things you can be both and it's because as we talked about on an earlier show atheism / theism are addressing the question of what do you believe but agnosticism / narcissism are addressing the question of what do you know and so they're totally different things so you can be totally agnostic and say I don't know but also say neither do I believe so most I think most agnostics which I am an agnostic I think we're all agnostic when it comes to these things most agnostics are atheistic agnostics although there's a few agnostics who are theistic agnostic you were talking about Pascal earlier Pascal was this Roman Catholic believer who basically admitted he was an agnostic we don't know if there's a God I don't know and we can't know but you're better off believing so you would call Pascal a theistic agnostic and you could call me an atheistic agnostic and I would think Thomas Huxley who came up and coined the term agnostic probably would not have approved a Blaise Pascal but but he would have had knowledge that you can be an agnostic and still hold a belief even though you don't have a knowledge you could still hold you could still claim that belief and I like to say I don't care what you call yourself whether you're a humanist or a skeptic or a rationalist or an atheist or an agnostic we all just believe in the same God yeah although I would say that if you define God in a certain way you know carefully enough we could say as atheist well I actually know that that particular God doesn't exist I don't necessarily God at the Bible yeah like they got in the Bible it'd be like arguing for the existence of a married bachelor well it's mutually contradictory so that particular God like an omniscient God who's also on nipa today cannot actually exist logically but that doesn't rule out all other possible millions of definitions of a God sure yeah and I'm I'm pretty much all those things you said I'm an atheist a humanist and agnostic a free thinker but I just choose to call myself an atheist for fun it's an important one too we have a submit another question from Kim countryman I've seen a celebrity interview where this person said that they walk away immediately upon finding out that someone is an atheist and they refuse to speak to them how do you address people who refuse to talk to you on any level based solely on your non-belief well pretty hard to address them if they walk away from you I think that just shows the bigotry religion it that they've spent too many hours in the pew being preached it and hearing Bible verses like Psalms what is it 14 what what who that The Fool has said in his heart that there's a God there's no there's no atheist who's ever done anything good and so that's obvious somebody has been heavily indoctrinated and they put their Dogma above people and that's the harm of religion again I think there's also a little bit of an admission in refusing to even engage you know it's your ideas about the world your religion can't withstand any type of new input or criticism or questioning or even a conversation you know it's almost admitting the weakness of their their belief system I want to know who that celebrity is yeah maybe maybe Kim will share so a little more information on Facebook and we can we can look at that more closely but that's all the questions that we have for today oh we had a lot of questions and it was really fun to see the questions from the farmers market very intelligent crowd are there more questions like that from the farmers I yeah we have one more them later well so that's our show for today thanks for watching and thanks for submitting your questions I'm Dan Barker with Annie Laurie Gaylor and Andrew side law and do we have a topic for next week no not yet so we're gonna have another ask an atheist next week at 12:00 noon Central Time and if you like what we're doing if you want to get involved you can become a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation you can join us go to FFRF dot org and you can either become a member or donate or support our legal legal work so we'll see you again next week [Music]

Channel: FFRF

Views: 71,772

Keywords: Atheist Town Hall, Cara Santa Maria, getting along with religious people, religion versus atheism, what is atheism, secular town hall, town hall, Freedom From Religion Foundation, FFRF, Atheist, Atheism, FFRF Convention

Id: aNVsc6yyYLk

Length: 42min 5sec (2525 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2017