Caller is Christian, Son is Atheist, & Look at the Trees | Dianna - MN | Atheist Experience 21.46

hi diana you're on with tracy and jen hi tracy and jen hi thank you for calling sure um so i'm calling because i i'm i identify as a christian and my 23 year old son does not and so he's been listening uh mostly to matt but he listens to you guys too says you're good and so i did some youtubing of matt we kind of made a deal that uh i would call in and talk to you and he would be willing to come to talk to my pastor for a little bit okay maybe we would learn something so can i i just ask what is your son does your son identify does he self-label um i i think an atheist although in listening to matt's definition and my son's definition i my definition of an atheist is one who denies the existence of god while an agnostic doubts the existence of god what if a person doesn't believe a god exists well that's an atheist but that's don't believe me if i if you don't believe a god exists that doesn't mean that you believe no god exists right do you understand that the difference so we don't believe a god exists that's right so for example if i have we the example that we give sometimes to help people understand this concept is that you have a big glass jar full of gumballs and someone comes in and makes a claim that the number of gumballs in the jar is an odd number now we don't we don't have any reason to know why they would think that and so the question would be do you believe them that the number is odd if we don't have any good reason to believe them then we would say no i wouldn't believe the claim that there's an odd number but that does not mean that i'm asserting that the number is even right it means that that would make you an agnostic right but we just said that if you don't believe a god exists that you would feel comfortable saying that's an atheist yes right and so if the claim is does a god exist and the atheist says i don't believe that claim because there's not sufficient evidence then that does not mean that the atheist is asserting that the number is even it just means they're not accepting the claim that it's odd right so this and then to me and this is just you know to me my definition my son always teases me about my definitions to me that's an agnostic because you you don't believe that they're right but god okay but agnosticism is is not related to belief it's about knowledge it's about knowledge right gnostic mean is is it means you know knowing or not knowings right so agnostic and gnostic is about knowledge not beliefs whereas atheism and theism are about beliefs right asking a person what they believe is different than asking them if they believe they also have knowledge of something knowledge is simply a a subset of belief that is like a higher confidence level where you think that you would probably not be incorrect about it you can believe a thing without and acknowledge that you're not um as certain as you could be about it i guess that would make him an atheist because he doesn't necessarily believe that there is a guy okay right and and to his credit i mean i have no proof and i even told him when i called i i have no proof you won't be able to convince me otherwise and i probably won't be able to convince you otherwise yeah not without proof yeah i would say that without evidence it's going to be hard to convince us of much yeah i would agree and it's just that most of my belief is believe is based on uh anecdotal things that i have felt that i feel um why do your feelings what do your feelings how do you connect your feelings with your belief in god um well for an example you might call me crazy but uh and it is a comfort thing it's a comfort thing to many people i i feel like i've believed in god uh since i've been aware of myself um going back to four years old or earlier i don't feel like i've ever had a time in my life where god was not with me which is not to say i haven't had some horrible times because i have um but even then i was going through horrible times but i never had the feeling that god had left me okay so here's a question because this is difficult for me to follow you said you had a feeling that you believed in god from the time that you can remember right so i don't know what a feeling of believing is but i'm gonna say that let's just call that you had a belief in god you accepted the claim a god exists as true from as far back as you can remember it's like it's part of my core that's what i mean by feeling when people say i identify as this or identical well beliefs are part of our identity right i mean the things that we believe are part of our identity and so when you say that you believe a god exists and that you've you've identified you know even if you didn't know the label you identified as theist from as far back as you can remember so a person identifies a certain way can a person identify a certain way and and still be wrong could i be for example identifying as someone who believes that bigfoot exists and ever since i was little and saw it on television i've believed it and can i believe and i could be wrong about it find out yeah i'll find out when i die i guess will you i don't know i don't know either i i don't know that you will find out when you die so i guess what i'm trying to get at here is a feeling that of something being true we know is not evidence that it is true because people feel many times for example some people feel their spouse is quite faithful and their spouse is cheating so feelings of what's true really don't inform us about what is actually true correct true however oftentimes those feelings about the cheating spouse are true but aren't those feelings shouldn't they be based on evidence that the spouse is cheating and not just accusing them without evidence and and most of the time i i think a lot of the time they are they're based on they don't know their space spouse is cheating they just feel they are because their spouse you know keeps working late or their spouse keeps going off the weekends right so what you're saying is they start to experience evidence that aligns with the idea that they're maybe not being honest that they're spending more time away from home than they used to things that correspond to cheating and so they for me for me okay god for example i mean when i had my i married an atheist i'm not you know he was an atheist when i married him but he was a very good person and we talked about uh religion and raising the children and and he respected my beliefs and i respected his and um when our first child was born you know i looked at this new infant in front of me and said this is a miracle that all we can basically do nothing not pretty much nothing what do you mean we can do nothing we have sex right that's all that's it right but you do understand how sex results in procreation is that correct like i mean a rat can procreate a cockroach can procreate is that a miracle yes to me it is okay so ebola bacteria propagating and hurting and harming tons of people is that miraculous to you um i think miraculous things are good things um so what is it called when ebola is is like breeding in your gut and killing you well um it was explained to me once like this and it kind of makes sense and and i explained it to my son but he didn't buy it either you probably won't but it's kind of like a teacher in a classroom right and the student stands up to the teacher and makes fun of the teacher and the teacher says okay fine you teach the class and you see what you can do and he doesn't just throw the student out right saying you don't believe go he says you take a try and people listen to them and they see that you know the student is wrong and and it's okay well show me where i'm wrong where is the how is ebola breeding not a miracle but you having you breeding is a miracle and a rat and a cockroach breeding is a miracle but ebola breeding is not a miracle i i think there is evil in the world i i didn't ask that i asked why is some procreation miraculous and other procreation you say is not don't seem to categorize as miraculous if it's harmful does it matter who it's harmful to um like if there's an insect for example that uh lays its eggs inside another insect and those eggs hatch and eat that the the live insect that is like the victim of that is the insect that bread that is the victim miraculous but the insect that breeds that you know eats the other insect is not miraculous it's evil no to me that's all just circle of life so now it's not okay what's not circle of life about all this other procreation then well it is it is kind of circle of life but it's also miraculous i mean i read about how you know how babies form and how their skin okay you know forms around and how it's sprained up if there occurs because the skin doesn't cover the spine and it's just all these just the um i don't know statistics the probability of everything happening right away so are you saying that that a baby born with a spinal disorder is a miracle yes okay so miracles can be harmful right they can be not they can be not what humans would call perfect how do you tell the difference between something that's a miracle and something that's not hmm i guess you know and this will sound weird too i was just gonna say i guess the the positiveness the love the you know it if it causes horrible horrible things for everything around it um i i have a hard time calling that a miracle if i drive to work is that a miracle um in a way in what way well in a way it's a miracle for the human body but in a way it's not can you explain why the human body is a miracle like what is it about the human body that you think requires divinity to explain we did nothing what do you mean we did nothing humans humans did nothing humans did nothing i don't understand what you're saying what does that mean um i mean for a car we built the car right so you're driving the car to work i'm very impressed i'm very impressed with the human knowledge that went into it and i think the human knowledge is a gift from god the ability why why do you think human knowledge is a gift from god because man didn't create it so anything man doesn't create is a gift from god oh kinda so the vacuum of space is a gift from god what is that gift i mean i i guess i'm trying to figure okay so if what what makes you think that god is involved in any of this uh besides the feeling [Music] which we've already agreed can be wrong well and the probability perhaps what's the probability i mean we're the only planet right that we know of i'm not saying there aren't any others out there they could be discovered and i do agree that you know in ancient times people assigned things to god and as we got more knowledge we learned that okay that isn't really god that is due to this right and i and i can accept that and i'm like well yeah you're right i mean i i trust some you know sometimes most science i trust all right um i don't think that science and religion are exclusionary um but i'm kind of like the opposite of the of you in the way that if i if i don't have the proof that it isn't from god then it seems more like it's from i mean so you believe things without proof whereas i believe things with proof or let's call it evidence right so you believe things without evidence and you find that to be somehow better and not like that but you just described the god of the gaps the god of the what the god of the gaps what the god of gaps is what jen is referring to is the idea of assigning god to things you can't explain right so i don't have an explanation for this therefore god is responsible for it and that is not reasonable it's not reasonable to say i don't know what causes this so i'm just going to say that this causes it because i don't know and i wouldn't say that i do that with everything just with things that seem like too improbable too how do you how do you determine when something's too improbable and it has to be god versus when you know you're just willing to withhold judgment well everybody everybody you uh everyone has you know like matt was talking about reasonable beliefs and i suppose reasonable subjective right what is reasonable well no you can actually you can actually go through logical steps to like connect your reasoning in order to show how you drew a conclusion from premises right so you have these premises that you start with these realities that you start with and then you have to link them in logical ways in order to come up with a logical conclusion that would be reasoning right thank you logical you what now i don't think that god is necessarily logical then it's not reasonable yeah by definition i mean but what you're basically saying is you're defending an unreasonable belief well and well here they they say that love is sometimes not logical right people love people yeah correct emotions are definitely not something i would classify as logical right so i mean there can be things that exist and that are not necessarily logical right like people that call the show and give us unreasonable arguments i mean there's there's definitely you can be illogical i'm just simply asking if when you're trying to come to a conclusion about what's true and not true whether or not not using reason and not using logic is in your opinion the best way to determine whether or not something is correct and i think that's a dangerous mode of thinking to say that there will be there will be times where i i mean i do i pray to god i ask god for things i talk to god and i there are things that i'm sometimes i think he puts things into my head i do call me crazy but i believe it's from god why do i believe it's from god because i asked him because i wanted him because i don't think i would have come up with it on my own right but you have no demonstration of this god like i still to this moment don't know what it is like what are you believing in what are you even calling god like what is god um i guess god is i don't know god is love god is what you just said is not illogical well but she's not saying god is logical either though well that's not making that claim that's true um okay so you think god is love okay love is an emotional response it's created through brain chemistry we i have a pretty good understanding of of you know the chemicals involved um are you saying that this is is this love is a commandment you are to love your neighbor in the bible it is a commandment correct but you love is also a chemical reaction in the brain that can be measured and understood right and sometimes you treat your neighbor even though you don't like them very much you treat them with love and respect and um because that's what we should do and and i think atheists agree with that right but this has nothing to do with what i'm talking about you were saying we're trying to get to what are you calling god and your first response was love and i'm asking about love insofar as it is understood as a chemical reaction or response in the brain to certain inputs is that what you would call god um no okay because i don't think it's the scientific i mean i know that there is the human emotion of love but i think god's love is bigger than that what would but we don't know what god is yet so we're still trying to nail down what is god so let's try number two is is god anything else that we can examine um well they say god is perfect right so it when you believe in him you humans are not perfect no one is so and when you breathe okay wait a minute i'm getting off track here that's an attribute all right so i'm not talking about an attribute like god has dark hair or god has wings or i'm talking about like what is it when we're talking so for example if i have um glasses i don't know if you can see your screen but i've got a pair of reading glasses if i'm referring to these reading glasses i can talk about what they are right so they're plastic frames they're you know glass plastic lenses you put them on you see through them and i can actually demonstrate the reference by holding it up and showing it to people or handing it to somebody who's blind they can feel it um absolutely defined like that though but well what can it be defined like like what when when if you were going to tell somebody who didn't believe in god what it is that we're talking about we're going to have a conversation about god and i say okay so what are we talking about here what is it more of a spirit what's a spirit it's he's he's everywhere he's nowhere you know he's he's out in the air around us he's watching us he's in how would we detect that um well one of the ways is to ask god into your heart right but feelings we've already said do not indicate truth so when we're talking about a spirit what what are we talking about what is giving example of a spirit that i can relate to i don't think we can relate to spirits so that if we can't relate to them in what way do they exist they're beyond our human comprehension how can you believe in it well i guess my question is how does it existence is manifestation right if something doesn't manifest we generally do not say that it's existent it's i say it's it's a feeling it's around us it's a spirit it's uh feelings we've already determined we're not a good measure of how to tell if something is true you're saying it's around us but i'm trying to figure out in what way it's around me right like i i don't understand well you have to you have to let it in you have to want it and ask for it and let it in again that's a that's an emotional what is it path and yeah and god god spirit god's love god he loves you anyway whether you let him in there or not i mean yeah christians have told us this what i'm curious about though is do you even know what it is we're talking about like you're using words and then when i'm asking you to define those words you're you're having difficulty defining the words god is a spirit what is the spirit spirits in the air around us in what way is it in the air around us and why wouldn't we be able to detect it if it's actually existent i mean electricity right yeah around that you can detect that yes we can detect electricity yeah you can measure it because we flip the light switch on right now there's other ways you can measure electricity using gauges that measure electricity we can measure it in a neurological setting at the time there was a time when it was around us where we had no tool to measure it and so does that mean it did not exist well no because if if you got hit by lightning you knew electricity right it manifested right it manifested to us in other words nobody could deny that how do you know that lightning strike wasn't god there's no reason to believe that it is we know what lightning so here's the thing right we see a lightning strike why would there be reason to believe that it was electricity before we had the tools well electricity is just the label that we applied to that particular form of energy that we encountered right so nobody's denying everybody agrees the electricity is there that the lightning struck but when you're adding something to it when you're saying god sent the lightning that's where i'm looking at it going well i saw the lightning strike but i didn't see the god right i i didn't really see any manifestation of god we don't have the tools in our world today to measure then why would you believe that it exists for the same reason i would believe that electricity existed you can experience it because it will definitely knock you on your butt or potentially kill you right i mean we can see religion has knocked many people on their butt many people it has never been demonstrated to knock anybody on their butt right electricity is never been there we do not disagree that the lightning strike occurs you want to add something to it for which there is no demonstration there is no manifestation there is no reason to say that it exists you therefore there have been reasons there are people who have died and seen the white light right that could be something in their brain i'm not saying that it's not right it could and so why would you attribute it to a god when you know it could be something in someone's brain why would you reach for this other explanation when there's a perfectly reasonable explanation right in front of you and one that can be tested i don't reach for that explanation in that particular case i i don't know but it seems odd to me that a lot of people have this experience and they come back and they talk about it and and they talk about i mean people talk about being filled with the spirit i know a show i listen to by matt you know you talk to you you listen to music and it gives you you know certain feelings or orgasms things people have emotions yes no doubt about it i agree with you 100 on that people have emotions and i watched two atheists just just about a month ago in in what is it uh in philadelphia talking about their near-death experiences and and a lot of people who are religious any religion their religion gives them feelings like that they can people that go that go to religious ceremonies and rituals do have feelings yes i don't doubt that they have feelings but we've already established that feelings are not a basis for truth just because i have a feeling doesn't mean i know why i'm having that feeling right ask anybody that's got a phobia just because you have a feeling doesn't mean you understand why you're having it when you start attributing these feelings to supernatural causes that's when i have to wonder why you're reaching for a supernatural cause for brain chemistry that can be mapped and understood and you know you have a line right you either believe it or you don't believe it and if you do believe in god you know what harm what harm does it do i don't know ask isis you know i mean seriously there there's been a lot of harm historically and even even in the present day that's coming from religion how can you say what harm is there from belief yeah i don't know that i i don't i don't agree with that i mean much harm can come from atheists too they're just they're evil people they they say it's for their religion so the point is that you know people are good or bad whether they have religion or don't have religion that's true yep okay but in my in my religion i have i grew up um a navy brat so we moved every one to three years and my parents my especially my mother was very religious and they insisted i go to church and if i didn't want to go to church with them when i got into middle school high school if i went with my friends you know they were okay with that as long as i was going and so i went to many different churches of many different religions and even within you know a methodist church to a methodist there are vast differences lutheran to lutein they're not all the same not all muslims are the same not all christians are the same sir i agree right um so so when i say christian i may have a different um view of what a christian is than when you hear christian well you know what i mean um both tracy and i are former christians right and i can tell you that if you poll almost any christian almost everybody's version of christianity is a one-off yeah that's true i mean and you would think that if there's an actual god that's directing this that this entity would make sure everybody had a common understanding of what that meant but that doesn't happen even within the same denomination as you noted there's vast differences in in how people perceive this yeah the closer that we get to truth the more uniform beliefs should become right but that's what's even more miraculous is that all these people on earth and all of us are different all of us are unique wait so so the discrepancies are are now evidence that the god is real somehow because that if i said that there was an event that occurred and everybody who saw it had a different accounting of what had happened would you say that that was great and like a really good miraculous thing showing that that event occurred if we all had different understanding what happened what if some people were saying that they were there and nothing happened and some people were saying i was there and this is what happened and some people were saying i was there and the you know this totally other thing happened and i mean i have no idea what really happened yeah yeah the bible tells us but the bible tells us he created each one of us unique right but each of you has a unique idea of what the bible's telling you and each of you has a unique idea about the what the god thing is that you're looking at and so there's no uniformity there there's different testimonies he gave us free will right he gave us free will to decide what we want free will does not does not result in like varying accounts of of something that should be the same if this thing is there and it's detectable as you claim it is that the christian who lets god in can detect it there should be no discrepancy there shouldn't be sex right there shouldn't be i mean s-e-c-t-s there should not be like brands of christianity everybody should be receiving the same revelation shouldn't they why would god tell two people two totally different things about what he wants why would he tell one church to accept uh you know gay pastor and another church that they should hate homosexuals or at least you know not support them and be against them and consider them an abomination why is why is it so confusing telling the church that i think they're coming up with that on their own how do you know this how do you how do you check it like how do i check it i've got one person telling me that god says love gay people and i've got another person telling me god says do not love gay people or to at least not to support them and i've got both of them saying that neither of them is speaking for god and so i'm sitting here looking at it and i'm saying well i'd love to confirm this with god but i don't even know what god is well my view is that god is love god is love and so if somebody is espousing of you that is not loving why would you talk to love like i don't get this if if you believe that god is love what why would you talk to is it like i assume it's your own emotion and emotion that emotion in other people what what is it that you say to your emotions what do i say to my emotion yeah because i don't talk to my emotional feedback i don't pray to it oh oh wait are you saying that god is my emotion if you're saying god is loving yes you're the one who says god as well no no no no i don't i don't think my emotion is god's definition of love okay so i know i know it's not okay so here's the thing we've said that god is spirit and we didn't really know what spirit was it's something in the air that is completely undetectable and measurable does not manifest you're claiming that we can but when we ask you how you're saying about these feelings again and we've already discussed this and said that the feelings are not valid and then when we get to the next thing well wait but then you say god is love and so i reference the thing that we define as love and you say it's a different kind of love so i'm trying to figure out what good is it to even use the label love if you don't mean love if you mean something completely different well i mean some people describe love as sex no i'm not talking about that and and you know there are different kinds well that's the brother love the child love of your children and so there are many kinds of love and god's love is huge it's huge how do you know that how do you know how do you know this you're telling me this but how do you know this i mean god's love is huge based on what like where are you getting this information it's what i believe i know it's what you believe i'm asking you why you believe it because it because it makes sense how does it make sense you can't even explain it how is it making sense to you because i feel all humans um should love one you just finished saying feelings are not a valid metric for truth why do you keep going back to feelings when we we established early on that a feeling is does not mean that something is valid and true well you agree that we should all love one another don't you i would have to talk a little bit more about that it depends you know i i think you're irrelevant i think that people should be respected as human beings um to certain degrees but i also think that you know asking people to love everyone is a little extreme i'm not sure that people are capable of loving everyone and and we're not we can just try we can just i'm not sure that it's even wise to try i would have to talk more about it it may be completely you know not okay to love everyone i don't know but what i'm trying to figure out here is it just seems like you you believe because you have feelings and even though you know feelings are not valid you're just going with them no they are valid we said earlier that you can feel things and they're not always true that feelings cannot always be true that they have to correspond to other evidence that demonstrates it's true such as your husband actually is cheating there has to be something there to demonstrate that to me there's evidence and you don't believe right because you distribute things to god without i mean you just basically say a baby's born that's god you know ebola is is breeding in someone's stomach that's just evil that's i mean you just you seem to just randomly pick and choose like whatever it is that you want to go along with whatever you think and you're not you're not verifying this against anything you're not doing any verification do you care whether it's true or not but i'm not sure you have a good understanding of what this verification process entails because earlier you said that um your idea of god is beyond our understanding it is it is so on what basis do you believe this entity even exists if you can't even understand it yeah if you can't understand it how can you believe it i can't i can i can't understand it in its totality i can't understand everything well tell me something you do understand about it tell me like she said god's love is huge that was something she said i understand that we should love one another and and that gets us to god exactly how i mean that's i understand that's a personal belief you have i don't know that i agree with it but i mean i don't see how that's any kind of of of evidence for a god well without that people don't think they have to or necessarily should and what love one another well i don't know that we necessarily should i think it would be a much better place if everyone did if everyone did but if i for example love everyone i could really get screwed in that bargain so it depends on who you're asking me to love you know it's like there's all kinds of things that if everyone did it it would be great but if some people go along with you know are bound by that philosophy and others aren't they could get really damaged from it you know and i'm not saying that you should leave yourself open to to you know if someone yeah it's kind of irrelevant because the point is how does god relate to all this and right now i have no idea yeah i mean you keep saying it's related but you're not demonstrating it in any way and so i'm wondering like the way we how do you how do we tell when a claim is true if somebody tells you something how do you assess whether or not claims are true do you just say however you feel about whatever they're telling you determines whether it's true i listen to i listen to other people's points of view i hear what they have to say and i think does that make sense to me does it feel right does it feel right there are my feelings again right so that's the feeling so you don't really compare it to reality in some way to see like if i told you that the street light was green and we can cross now like the the walk sign is green we can go if it felt right to you you would say that's fine even if it you know the the sign didn't appear to be green well if the sign wasn't green it probably wouldn't feel like it was green you know i feel like okay what i'm saying is the way that we verify what people are telling us claims that people are making is we compare them to reality and right now what i'm trying to do is is see what is this reality of god that i can compare your claims to when you tell me god's love is huge i would like to figure out how i can test that like how do i determine whether what you're saying is accurate and if i can't figure out how to test it how have you tested it and if you haven't done anything to verify it then you're basically saying you just believe things whether they're true or not doesn't matter to you well i i think what a lot of the tests say you know results will come back and they're they'll you know 20 years ago oh smoking is great for you then you know 10 years oh smoking's bad for you oh eggs are bad for you oh no they're good right for you right you can we can we can have but but the fact is that you have to go with the evidence that you have available to you because if you're not going with the evidence that's available to you what in the world are you going with if i'm telling you that the light is green and the light looks red and you're not going to go with the evidence because sometimes you know we don't have full evidence so maybe there's something else going on here and it's just my eyes are messed up and it really is green so i'm going to step out into this intersection the fact that we sometimes do not have complete knowledge of something and therefore our assessment of it is incomplete and may actually be incorrect is not a reason why you should just say evidence doesn't matter and that it's not important to test claims against evidence it's the only metric how else would you verify a claim but that evidence is i mean the evidence that you shouldn't smoke or that you should smoke right i mean the evidence isn't necessarily like even in an earlier caller you were saying that you know there was evidence about the vaccines and it was then it was validated by a prominent magazine and everybody believes it and then it was well i understand what she's saying i mean i get what she's get driving at so but the point is if you can't compare if you say basically sometimes we have incomplete evidence therefore i'm not going to to check claims against reality to see whether or not they're true because we can't always trust that we have a complete picture of reality what in the world would you use to verify claims or are you suggesting we should never try to verify claims against reality i think that we don't have enough time in our lives to validate every single right so but the important ones are really the ones that we're going to do what other people say and we hear about what makes sense to us and we form our opinions but what makes sense to you should align with what you experience in reality outside your feelings right i mean despite my feelings are part of reality our feelings are real i agree but their feelings can reflect an in and and our feelings often are not aligned with truth right how we feel about a thing may not be true but and we see this all the time okay so i can have a feeling that my spouse is faithful and they're not i can feel like they're cheating and they're not but what what matters is do you see a difference between a person who says like you we described earlier my spouse is staying out late at night my spouse is seems to be telling me they're places where they're not they're not answering their phone anymore and i'm starting to wonder if they're cheating okay that's one scenario the other scenario is my spouse comes home on time every night he's always picks up his phone when i call he's always everywhere he wants to be but i just have this feeling he's cheating yeah i see a difference okay do you think that one would be wiser than the other see but i see evidence that you're not seeing evidence should be available to everybody to what good is evidence that people can't examine i see trees i see i see trees as well but i don't see god i know but i do do you see god or do you see a tree i see god why where i mean if i were seeing things and i could not demonstrate them to anyone else i mean how is that not like that that the holiday movie where the guy sees the angel or the rabbit or whatever it is and harvey right i mean if if you see it and i'm not seeing it i can show them to fellow believers well you all yeah you all but what i guess what i'm saying is that the part of part of what makes testing and experimenting valuable is that it removes subjectivity right so you have to have an objective is there not do you not agree that there's an objective reality that despite what we all believe there is the truth right like whether or not i'm i'm holding glasses in my hand is not subjective if no one has created a tree without a seed no one has created so what are you that's how it works people don't do everything i agree people are not responsible for everything that exists i completely agree i don't see how that means there's a god how else where is your evidence that god created it and again we're i mean we're back to here's the evidence that he did okay not something here called the burden of proof right i'm not making a claim about how the universe was created but you're claiming a god created it because people didn't create it right therefore god created not only didn't they they they can't okay so people can't i can't do lots of things right i can't build a rocket that goes to jupiter that doesn't mean that if we do one day do that that a god did it if people can't do many things the gauge of whether or not a god exists is not people can do everything or else a god exists god gave them the knowledge to build the ship my point here is that just because people can't do everything does not mean a god exists why would why would what i can do be the evidence for the existence of a god why are limits on my capacity evidence of anything other than limits on my capacity so you know as i said earlier we are we are all created uniquely right and we all have our gifts and we all have our weaknesses and we we are supple what's the word supplement each other complement we complement each other we can yes yeah and i mean to me that's another to me that's another example of of you know loving one another for our gifts for our talents that were given no matter what they are how is this a demonstration of a god because he gives us our talents okay if i say to you if i say to you that there's a magic gremlin that gives us our talent so that maya cat gives us our talents i mean because i feel like he does i think my cat loves everyone and his love is huge right i mean prove to me that i'm wrong i can't so do you think that's reasonable of me well when i first called in i i told you i won't be able to prove this to you and i said that it was therefore if you can't demonstrate it to me then i don't know why you feel it's been sufficiently demonstrated for yourself uh because it goes back to the feelings i can feel god within me and we've already said that the feelings are not valid measures for truth you've said that we agreed to it earlier in the show we agreed that we that just because we feel a thing does not mean that it's accurate that a feeling that something is true just does not correlate to truth and i vote and we've also well i've also said that the love as we know it is not god's love right which means that god has something that i don't even know what it is that you're calling love but is not it's like i don't know i mean i that helps me not at all well i i wish i could help you i i do wish i could help you yeah i i think if you understood more about what you believed you might be able to explain it a little more thoroughly but right now it seems like this is very some vague stuff with no real evidence and you're just believing it because it feels good that's how it's coming across i don't mind feeling good i don't mind feeling i don't mind feeling good either but i don't gauge whether or not what i feel is you know accurate as far as if whether it's reflecting i could be afraid of something that's nothing to fear you know i mean feelings just don't mean feelings are a result of what we're experiencing generally and when people start to say i'm experiencing something that is completely un uh i don't know what to call it it does not manifest in any way shape or form um i don't even know the previous caller who was talking about the aaa meetings and how they were pushing god and if it helps if it helps them and you say it doesn't help no it does it does it doesn't help them but but i imagine to start out with a few people maybe it helps and if it helps why not why not i mean i had because it doesn't because you can harm people by offering them help that doesn't help right so let's say that i have a bunch of people coming to me for help and i'm not really helping them and then a couple people actually get something from it but the rest of the people are just wasting their time thinking that i'm going to help them and as a result they're not going in getting help elsewhere because they think i'm helping them but i'm really not that's far backs are great and before i went into my back surgery i was in such pain with my back and you know my brother-in-law was like oh well i have a friend whose husband in mexico swears by this these things you middle they're magnets and you put them on the back and it draws the iron in your blood to your back and helps heal it and i'm like i'll try it i've never had much faith in chiropractors but you know what i went to a chiropractor i'm like i'm in pain i will try i will try anything that takes this pain away yeah people get desperate and people and people prey on desperate people i completely agree and i mean not i wasn't going to pay any money you know for these or i'd pay i paid the money for the chiropractor but you know it wasn't an exorbitant being yeah mostly covered by insurance but but you know it if it helps them even temporarily i i don't i don't see the harm in it because a lot of people aren't helped i mean that's that's the problem is a lot of people are being fleeced basically saying it's okay to fleece a hundred thousand people because you know 20 of them thought they walked away feeling better is it it doesn't charge you money they don't charge money who doesn't charge money hey they're not fleecing people no but but you are you are using their i mean time is a resource right when you take somebody's time and when you stop them from going to get real help because you it's like a faith healer if i'm going to this faith healer and i'm not going to see a doctor that's harmful well okay so i do go to doctors although i feel like half the time they don't know what they're doing and it's not their fault because we're all created different and we're all just guinea pigs and what works for one person no it doesn't necessarily work for another person no um do you disagree that what works for one person may not work for no no i i i don't i i do i do agree that in general you know you're going to have exceptions to treatments and cures i get that but i i can pretty well you know there are certain things that kill people that they don't survive and there are other things that are treatable and we can actually pinpoint what percentage of people will successfully respond to treatment even if there's a certain percentage that don't and when you're using when you use a treatment that shows no efficacy i would never tell people not to go to the doctor i'm just saying when you go take it with a grain of salt and i'm saying that when somebody says i'm offering you help and they're not really helping that time no because you can test whether or not a thing helps right i mean you can actually i went to aaa meetings when i was 17 i got a dui and i was ordered by the court to go to aaa meetings and you know what while i didn't want to go and i didn't really i mean i didn't want to be there i would say it helped why would you say what did it help you do it helped me you know realize that i'm there's a higher power that we have to turn things over but you already believed that i i believed it but it reinforced it okay so i wasn't i wasn't acting on it sometimes i believe things like i know what i should eat but i don't eat what i know i should eat okay you know and so you had a youthful indiscretion and you did something that lots of 17 year olds have probably done you got caught you went to an intervention program that's noted for its ineffectiveness and you went on to never do that youthful indiscretion again which most people don't why do people so many people go if it's not effective because they believe the and they're court ordered into this which is another they believe that another problem i guess that's the point is it doesn't matter if you believe it you can go look at the numbers you can go look at the figures of people that are actually that actually stay off these drugs and alcohol when they go through these programs versus what they're claiming it's probably not zero percent and you can look at people who get no treatment and you can compare that group right you can compare different groups who have gotten no treatment who have gotten this treatment who have tried other treatments we can look at the results and compare them this isn't just like a black hole where it's anybody's guess there's data and i guess that's what i'm saying when you have competing claims how do you resolve it you resolve it by comparing those claims to reality and determining who it is is telling you the truth and you just don't seem inclined to do that you seem more inclined to go with your feelings which that's if that's what you're going to do that's what you're going to do but feelings are not a good metric for truth okay until they turn out to be right no they're still not a good metric for truth you know i guess how you get there how you get to the conclusion matters it's just like with the gumballs in in the in the glass jar right if i if somebody comes out and says are there there's an odd number in there i have no reason other than just i just feel like there's an odd number and i say okay i believe you i accept that as true because of your feeling and then we count it and it's odd that doesn't mean that i that i used a valid method to get there it just means i got lucky that it turned out to be what i my conclusion is what i was saying before the conclusion can be correct for really bad reasons you can you can use horrible reasoning and still come up with the right answer sometimes but it's not because of the reasoning horrible reasoning maybe maybe it's not horrible reasoning maybe it's big because there would be no way to know the difference between a feeling you have that came from god and a feeling you have that you just felt there is no way to tell the difference between those two things i don't know to me it i can kind of it feels like i can tell the difference it feels like you're using you feel like you can tell the difference between the feelings that god is letting you feel versus the feelings you have that are just feelings and but there is no there is no objective reality that demonstrates that you're correct in what you feel is correct here and that's the problem you're just it's subjective you're just basically going by gut and you're not applying any reason or or comparing it to actual evidence and you're actually giving arguments for rejecting what evidence would be available it's very it's it i don't know how you would live your life if you treated all things like this like if i wanted to buy a house and the owner is someone i don't know and they tell me the house is in good shape i'm not going to say oh cool well then i don't need to spend all that money to get somebody to come in and you know check it out check out your house because because they're human right and they but you can have a feeling that they're telling you the truth yeah i still want the house to be checked i don't care if i love the house i don't care if i feel like god wants me to have this house the fact is i want somebody to come in there and do the the checks and make sure that the wiring is okay that this thing is built all right that the foundation is solid i'm going to have somebody come in and check that because my feelings are not the best way to tell if this house is in good shape and i think that if i honestly felt i honestly felt that god wanted me to have this house that you know something was just compelling me to this you would buy it on scene right my dad bought a house site unseen taking a risk aren't you um isn't that a big risk would you advise somebody to buy a house without getting it inspected would you tell somebody that's a smart thing to do in ordinary circumstances in any circumstance when is it not smart to have an inspector come in and check the house when somebody feels compelled for some reason they don't understand by god perhaps or they just think they just know so you don't know where this is coming from it could be some childhood neurosis driving it but you think it's a smart idea to go ahead and buy this house site unseen and not get an inspection why wouldn't you want to compare it to reality if you if the inspector came back and said the foundation is completely shot this house is not going to be standing in another two years would you say i trust my gut and i'm just going to buy it anyway because i really think god wants me to buy it would you really do that i i cannot say because i'm not in the circumstance that and i don't feel compelled right now to buy a house with a poor foundation but i know that there are many stories from many people who did things um without explanation possibly things they didn't even want to do and something amazing affected other people and so you you're saying right your anecdotes right but i mean what you're basically saying is i would i'm not sure whether or not i would buy a house if the inspection came back and said that this thing is falling apart that i don't know if i would or not and to because my feelings drive the decision to such a degree that i can't know that i would do what the evidence would very strongly advise against doing that you know that i think the house is going to be fine because i think that because i have faith and trust in god that he has some reason for wanting me to wanting you to buy a house with a shot foundation and there's the harm of religion but no not necessarily yes necessarily i mean you just demonstrated it that people will make unwise decisions because of gut feelings about god no evidence you're assuming it's unwise it's unwise to buy a house that you're gonna that you're purchasing and you think you want to get this house and the house is in crap condition now if you're a flipper maybe that's a great thing for you but if you're just purchasing the house i mean what you're basically saying is i'm going to go with my gut despite the evidence because my religious views compel me in that direction you don't know the end of this neither do you neither do you that's why it's a risk exactly and so what you're basically saying is you would make a decision that appears to be unwise because of a gut feeling over evidence and you asked earlier what is the harm of religion and i'm telling you that's it because you think having faith and trust in god is a bad thing when it compels you to say i'm not sure if i would do something that is unwise because of my gut over evidence yes yes i guess we'll agree to disagree then yeah my gut tells me this pastor didn't molest all the kids in the church right so i don't care that there's all the children coming forward and telling me otherwise god has told me that he's innocent i mean this is the thing when you trust your gut over evidence this is the harm of religion no i'm sure if all these children were coming forward and saying this no because what we're talking about is following your gut instinct over evidence and you're saying you would do that probably you're not sure that you wouldn't and i'm saying that's the heart that is why faith healing people don't take their children to the hospital because they feel what if all these children come forth and the guy was innocent no i'm not saying that that's not possible what i'm saying is that when you usually condemn him without evidence because my gut tells me he's innocent children yeah i'm saying that when you have evidence to the contrary when you have when you're saying you have an inspector look i mean what if you have video of him molesting the children and god is telling you he didn't do it i mean at what point do you finally say i don't care what's in my gut what do you mean that can't happen children die because their parents believe god wants them to faith heal their kid children die over this over god telling people that they shouldn't take their child to a doctor that they should just sit and pray over the kid and the kid died and according to you that may be a really good thing and we're just not seeing the end of it no yes they're misguided how do you know that that's not a good thing that god has planned that's part of god's plan that their child is supposed to die and then something really good is going to come out of it just like the messed up house foundation how can you tell me that you know that the child dying was not in the best interest of everyone else well it's possible you would bring him to the hospital and he would still die it is possible so should we make that assumption but i'm not saying that that would benefit someone else i'm not saying that child would benefit i'm just saying you know i agree p people die in horrible situations right and sometimes they die because somebody's somebody's religious belief compelled them to think it was the best thing to do to not get them medical help and i totally disagree when someone's belief harms other people because why why you just finished saying that even if it appears to be a harmful thing it might be good and we don't know so why would you condemn anybody for doing anything in the name of god i didn't say that i didn't say even though it appears to be harmful it might be good i'm not saying it's good that a guy molests children you said that it was it might that i should think that it might be good if the house is falling apart and you buy it anyway right this is a situation where what do you mean it's different in that situation you and anybody that lives in that house could potentially be hurt live in the house i didn't say i was going to live what if god told you to live in the house i mean come on you're basically saying you would do whatever god is telling you to do and then you're saying that if something bad happens from it it might just be a larger good that we don't see and we need to look ahead to the possibility that this is a good this could be a good thing we don't know because we don't see the whole thing i also told you that god is love and i don't believe if anything is telling me to do something bad it is not coming from god did god tell people to kill a bunch of people in the bible people you know what did he yeah i think that some of the bible is um storytelling okay so if you feel like it's part of the bible that you should listen to then you do and if you feel like it's not part of the bible you should listen to then you don't i i mean i don't know that this call is going to get anywhere because basically this is just about you do what you feel and when when it suits you to say that a negative thing could turn into a positive you're down with it when when it sounds really egregious then you're not down with it it's like this is just not even there's no not even consistency like an internal consistency to your reasoning so that i can find we're we're actually over time here but um diana what it sounds like to me is that you were heavily indoctrinated into your religion by your very religious parents at a very young age and you just haven't given that too much thought since then because because i enjoy it i have no reason to want to give it up yeah yeah heroin addicts enjoy it too but you know it doesn't mean that it's a good idea and i really think you should give this some more thought because you're not even presenting a coherent explanation for what it is you believe i mean you claim to be a christian we mention the fact that god commanded genocide in the bible and suddenly you don't think that that's real so i'm i'm not sure where you are but i think you probably should give us some more thought okay all right i mean yeah and if your son has agreed to go to a pastor i hope you got his money's worth on this one okay good okay all right all right well thank you for taking my call

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 598,538

Rating: 4.8024282 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: FqGLNLDXb_E

Length: 62min 18sec (3738 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/jbskq5]

That was... Exhasting. yet it's how most Christians in the US think, even if they won't admit it. I wish i could have a birds eye view into her son's conversation with the pastor.

[u/ThereIRuinedIt]

I was impressed that the caller stayed on the call and didn't get flustered enough to disconnect. She tried the whole "I guess we'll agree to disagree" but then she stuck around until they ran out of time.

I would love to see an animation that breaks up her comments into illustrated notes to keep tabs of everything.