Ron Reagan: Not Afraid of Burning in Hell

[Music] welcome to feat that matters I'm Annie Laurie Gaylor and unabashed atheist and I'm Dan Barker I'm also an unabashed atheist in a moment we'll introduce someone who was famous for coining the phrase unabashed atheist not afraid of burning in hell and that person is Ron Reagan before we introduce Ron Reagan we invite you to learn more about the Freedom From Religion Foundation which produces this weekly TV show FFRF is the nation's largest association of free thinkers working to keep religion out of government ask for a sample of our newspaper free thought today or join us at FFRF org and now we're very pleased to introduce today's guest Ron Reagan he's of course the son of Nancy and President Ronald Reagan he's had a dancing career including at the Joffrey Ballet and Ron has worked as a broadcast and print journalist and TV and radio commentator and Ron's been a near life long atheist and he's been interested in reason and in science in 2004 Ron made a historic address to the Democratic National Convention on behalf of stem-cell research where he noted but it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many the theology of the flu of the few should not forestall the health of the many and Ron Reagan has most graciously endorsed the Freedom From Religion Foundation in a now famous TV ad that we will play you will hear it during the break Ron is joining us via satellite hookup from Seattle so Ron welcome to free thoughts well thank you for having me appreciate it very much I'm sorry you guys couldn't come out to Seattle but under the circumstances I think getting onto an airplane would probably be a mistake so Fran I think many of our viewers will wonder how you became such an outspoken unabashed atheist growing up in the family of Nancy and Ronald Reagan well you know you guys have been good enough to have me come and speak a couple of times before the foundation and you and I always feel a little funny doing that because I've been an atheist all my life and I didn't have to struggle with it and you and I never know quite what to say to you to the foundation as you've probably gathered hearing me talk a couple of times it seems to me that there are probably two different kinds of atheists there are the atheists who some of whom may even be clergy who have really struggled with this and had a crisis of faith and and it have have taken steps along the way to go from faith to to atheism I on the other hand belong to this other group which as as children just decided this isn't real this this can't possibly be true and just sort of blew it off you know from the get-go I was probably 10 years old I imagine when I decided just internally that I I didn't believe in a divine you know presence in the universe didn't believe in the supernatural anymore and that's that's very easy for a child you know children are very binary children if something is either true or it is not and at about the time that you discover that Santa Claus is not real you begin wondering about God at least many children do I did you know it's another white guy with a beer who you know knows if you've been naughty or nice and has the power to punish shorter to reward and he lives you know that way in some direction and and you discover that Santa Claus is a figment of people's imagination and then you begin to realize that other bearded guy too you know that doesn't make any sense so Santa Claus is the great enemy as we know of religious belief I think he undermines many children's religious beliefs so I think you told us that you told your parents at about 10 or 12 that you weren't going to go to church anymore and how did they react at age 12 I finally decided I can't you know sit there in church anymore and you know and do this it's hypocritical and among other things and so I told at age 12 I told my father he came into the bedroom one day when Sunday morning we were gonna pile into the car and head off to the Bel Air Presbyterian Church and I said he came in and said you know get dressed come on could put your suit on we're going to church and I said I'm not going and he didn't even hear that that was so unthinkable to him that he just he was heading out the door and he just over his shoulder said didn't you no no come on get dressed we're going and i said 'no called after i said i'm not going i'm done with that I'm not going and he was wise enough to not try and strong-arm me into it he just sort of let it go they went to church they came back and then he tried to you know get into it with me of course and questioned me about this and I was adamant that I was not gonna I did not believe what he believed I thought it would be hypocritical for me to go it would be disrespectful to his church - for me to sit there and pretend that I believed something that I did not and so he I don't know if I would say that he accepted this he was very troubled by it but but again he knew not to try and force me to to go to church he did eventually bring the pastor from the church a fella named John Mumma who was the the the preacher at the Bel Air Presbyterian Church he arrived in my living room one half I came in from playing or running around doing whatever I was doing and there was there was Don Mumma and he was clearly there to try and convince me to come back to the church and I thought well now I've got to deal with a professional here this is gonna be a real challenge for me but it didn't take but five or ten minutes before we'd stop talking about God we were talking about UCLA football which Don used to play so and he later admitted to me years later how embarrassed he'd been by the whole thing so yeah he didn't succeed any more than my father did I remember Don Mumma I was born and raised in Southern California but when I was 10 years old 12 years old I was a true believer I had didn't have the courage or even the thought to to criticize or to question it took me into my 30s and like you say I was one of those clergy who eventually saw the light but when your dad was president was there any but other pushback was there anybody else who was was critical of you or the family or did was that just under the radar well when my father became president of course then you find yourself being interviewed by people who are always looking for some sort of wedge to put between you and you know and the president your father and so I was being interviewed by the New York Times Magazine and an inevitable question that always comes up when you're in my circumstance is well are you going to get into politics are you gonna run for office and the answer is has always been no I have no interest in in that I'm not a politician but that that would rarely satisfy people and so they'd keep pushing so I thought well I know a way to end this discussion this is this line of questioning I said no I have no interest in that and besides I'm an atheist so I couldn't be elected to any high office anyway okay that that did end that line of questioning but people read this and people some of whom were friends might very upset about this I got letters from people I got you know how could you say this and it surprised me I had to say because I didn't really realize until then that people would care what anybody else believed I didn't much care what people's religious beliefs were unless they were somehow being imposed on me so I didn't really assume that anybody would care that I didn't believe what they believed but I found out differently they do indeed and I I think that for religionists atheism is such a such a troubling thing not for the reasons they would they would like you to believe that they really you know they they hate the sin but love the sinner they want you to go to heaven with them and all of that sort of thing I think it just undercuts their belief so effectively that they they can't stand the atheist it there's a psychology going on here and I think it would be very useful for all of us for all of our species to understand the psychology of religious belief clearly it it helps in some way it must have had some evolutionary advantage probably for groups that there was a cohesive story that they all told each other and it bound them together otherwise you know evolution would have done away with religious belief by now nevertheless it's it's it's not so useful now we don't live in small tribes that are constantly being threatened by the you know people who live in the next Valley over and who've worship a different God that's not exactly what's happening now we have you know we know a lot more than we used to and you know there there is a psychology though that where religionists feel very very threatened by somebody's lack of belief and they react very strongly to it very harshly but i think i know one reason around why there was a lot of attention when you said you were an atheist because very few people excuse me we're coming out publicly as atheists you were one of the more prominent people in the 80s even in the 90s who would make that unabashed statement and that's how you got our attention and then of course when you gave that speech before the Democratic National Convention on stem cell research and we showed an excerpt of that I think it takes a lot of courage what you've done yeah I you know I I don't feel terribly brave talking about about this kind of thing it's just hey it's it's not even a belief as you know it's a lack of belief you know all I'm saying is a lot of people believe this certain thing I see no evidence for it and I don't believe things without evidence or reason you know I don't believe in tooth fairies I don't believe in the Easter Bunny I don't believe in Santa Claus and I don't believe in anybody's God and I like to remind people that everybody is an atheist you know all the you know let's say most people in the United States who are religionists or Christian okay they don't believe in Allah they don't believe in Baal they don't believe in the Thor they don't believe in you know you Odin or anything like that so everybody is an atheist everybody dismisses all the thousands of gods that have come before their God and they just pick this one God that they want to believe in I just go one God farther like most atheists you know that that's it's it's as simple as that there's no more evidence for this particular God than there is for any of those other thousands of gods out there you know you show me evidence I'll reconsider but in the absence of evidence I do not believe so the obvious question then is if you don't believe in a god how can you be a good person you know you can be a good person the way everybody else is a good person all those holy books that have some rather dubious ethical pronouncements in them as well as some as well as some decent ones I mean I think we can all agree in you know mostly that you should treat other people the way you would like to be treated or not treat them the way you wouldn't like to be treated it's probably a better way to put it but you know it's you know you we we all develop our own morality people wrote those books and at the time and in two thousand years ago or so you know that was the state of the art of morality as far as those people knew and so that's what they wrote down you know they should have probably paid more attention to the Stoics and the Epicureans at the time but they didn't they went with the monotheism and and the Old Testament and all the rest of it but yeah you know there's yeah what what can I say you you stated that atheists and non-believers do really have a duty to speak up though well I think you do and I think you know if our species is gonna survive it has to move beyond superstition you know I don't believe in astrology either and you know I don't care much if people do but I'd hate to think that they were directing society based on astrological principles and so the you know this is this is something we have to overcome you mentioned the speech I gave in 2004 before the Democratic National Committee about stem-cell research I was concerned of course about stem-cell research but more broadly than that I was concerned about the way that people who are often religionists dismiss science as a whole we see it now with climate change you know there are a lot of religious people who say well you know climate change can't be happening we can't be affecting the climate because you know God takes care of that essentially and God always changes the climate one way or the other well you know this is not science you know come on people we've got a crisis here we need to deal with and we need to deal with it realistically than we need to approach it with reason and not superstition you know that this is this is the problem when when somebody's private belief which you know people will have their beliefs we all do but people's private beliefs find their way into public policy in a way that is really often very destructive you know these religious freedom laws for instance that are that are being enacted in in various states now now why is it the religious freedom for these people always seems to involve the you know their their the opportunity to be bigoted towards somebody else you know there there was a story about a that maybe somewhat a list illustrative of a surgeon and guy arrives at the hospital his heart is failing he's a heroin addict and his heroin happened his destroyed his heart they performed surgery they report repair his heart off he goes a year later he's back because of course he's continued to use heroin and the surgeon says I don't want to perform surgery anymore here I think this guy's just gonna go out and he's gonna use heroin again and he's gonna be back here in another year and we're gonna be doing this again it's a waste of our our time and our talent and money so they took it to the hospital ethicist and the hospital hospital ethicists point was I understand why you wouldn't want to perform surgery on this individual I might not want to perform surgery on him either but then I didn't choose to become a surgeon if you bake cakes for a living if you bake wedding cakes for a living stop worrying about who it is that's getting married here and just bake cakes that's what you do you chose to do this you might not like all the couples that come in for a wedding cake that's not your business you just bake cakes bake the cakes you know stop worrying about whether they're a gay couple or not what if they've been divorced that would be another reason not to bake somebody's wedding cake I guess for for some religionists what if they were a mixed-race couple you can make a case based on the Bible that they shouldn't be getting married either you know so that this is just a road that you do not want to go down but apparently a lot of these religionists do want to go down this road so we have to take a break now Ron it's plain speaking like that is the reason why we awarded you the emperor has no clothes award for just telling it like it is we're gonna take a break but stay tuned if you've never caught the commercial that our guest Ron Reagan's so graciously recorded for us is coming right up in the break and when we come back we'll find out from Ron what the fallout has been for him from that ad and we'll talk about the censorship of this very commercial my name is Jarvis and I'm in out of the closet atheist there are many reasons why I'm an atheist but I'll start with the crudest explanation I'm sure many of you have seen Clash of the Titans or The Immortals or 300 these blockbuster films about ancient Greek or Roman religion which we now call mythology but back then it wasn't mythology it was very real for them they genuinely believed that you had to put a coin in a person's mouth before they were buried so that they could pay for the literal fairy to the afterlife just as many people today believe that they should eat crackers and wine on a Sunday or that God wants women to hide their bodies under black burkas every religion that has ever existed and there are many have all believed that they were right that their rituals and rules and beliefs were a hundred percent correct and they all thought they nailed it but where are they today if they're not completely forgotten they're on the silver screen amusing us with their sword fights animal sacrifices and Oracle's the religions of today are the entertainment of tomorrow everyone I hope he's an atheist about Zeus and Apollo Juno and Poseidon I just added Jesus in Mohammed to that list thank you for watching free thought matters you can find more content by the Freedom From Religion Foundation at our website FFRF dot org follow FFRF on Facebook and you'll get notifications about all of our content including whenever we go live on FFRF ask an atheist FFRF is also on YouTube where all of our programs including this show and our weekly news bites are available to watch anytime thanks again for watching and we'll see you on the web my name is Bill and I'm an out of the closet at the theist meaning I don't really care what you believe and I don't really think that you should care or what I believe I was raised in South Dakota in a strict Catholic family I was an altar boy I served mass a lot of Sundays twice we the the priest gave us this little card that said in case of accident please call a priest I don't really like that idea anymore since I left the church about 40 years ago now if you find me alongside the road after an accident please call an ambulance and an EMT hi i'm ron reagan and unabashed atheist and I'm alarmed by the intrusions of religion into our secular government that's why I'm asking you to support the Freedom From Religion Foundation the nation's largest and most effective Association of atheists and agnostics working to keep state and church separate just like our founding fathers intended please support the Freedom From Religion Foundation Ron Reagan lifelong atheist not afraid of burning in hell and we're back with freethought matters we're talking with Ron Reagan via satellite hookup in Seattle so Ron first of all we're so grateful for you generously recording that TV commercial and you've seen it a lot of times like on the during the debates in that and some people said you were the star of the debate thank you for doing that and for helping to make FFRF a household name the ad has run on MSNBC on Comedy Central on CNN getting a lot of traction so from your point of view I mean we're hearing from a lot of viewers who love it but from your point of view what does the reaction to that ad been like a mostly positive I people come up to me on the street and tell me how much they like the ad there has been some pushback though even people I've known have said that well you know that seemed a little rude particularly that last line which is with the one that got everybody so excited the idea of not afraid of burning in hell you know why did you have to say that isn't that offend weren't you trying to be offensive to two people who are you know religious believers the answer is no I wasn't we actually needed to pick up you probably know we needed to add about three seconds to the copy and it's so you know we kept recording it recording to keep coming out 27 seconds and you know the more you do it the faster it gets anyway so it was like oh we've got it we just got to add some copy and I said let me just add a little to the end and that's what I came up with not afraid of burning in hell which which is true enough I'm not afraid of burning in hell and you know and if there are any for instance Christians watching watching the program now I don't know how many would but if there were any ask your ask yourself if you're a Christian if you're afraid of burning in a Muslim hell I bet you're not bet you're not losing any sleep about that and and the Muslims aren't worried about burning in your hell either and the Hindus aren't worrying about learning in your hell and you're not worried about burning in there multiple hell's also so I just go one hell further you know it's like that it's like god I go one God further I go one hell further I'm not afraid of your hell either but this is very disturbing to people because the hell gets right to the the nub of things doesn't it hell is this stick heaven is the carrot hell is the stick and if you take the stick away well then the whole project kind of falls apart and I think religionists instinctively know this they have to make you scared of Hell or the whole project just falls apart sorry I feel that people who believe in a Hell have a very offensive belief and attitude so I've been very shocked that national CBS NBC ABC have censored the commercial because they don't like that last line and it seems to me they're kind of blaming the victims I mean we're not saying people are gonna suffer forever they are so why is this offensive well thank you for saying that because indeed what is more offensive me saying I don't happen to believe in an eternal afterlife where I'm tortured you know with fire and and what have you or you insisting that that's where I'm gonna end up you know you insisting that I'm gonna burn in hell for all of eternity while you know presumably you you know stay upstairs and look down on me with some pleasure as you're sipping in a vintage champagne or something yeah that's pretty offensive that's pretty damn defensive you know how about tell me how about the idea that children who didn't happen to be born into a Christian household are going to burn in hell for eternity if they die that's deeply offensive that's child abuse frankly if you're if you're telling children that if they don't ascribe to your beliefs that they're gonna be you know roasting for eternity tortured for eternity and a hell that's child abuse that's emotional abuse how dare you say that to a child you know really how how weak are is your belief system that you have to coerce children using fear tactics in order to get them to adopt your beliefs it's just it's pathetic frankly so as an atheist though how do you deal with the question about the fear of death and we're not going to be here forever we're gonna die and what happens after you die aren't you kind of afraid of that well one of the alarming things is they're there specific ways in which is alarming the interference with women's health care for instance these freedom for for religion rules which allow people to you know not serve customers and in in various places because they don't like their lack of religious belief their lifestyles whatever but religion by its nature most religions anyway by their very nature czar authoritarian and you'll notice in in many cases perhaps all cases when these questions arise abortion would be the obvious the obvious case there's only one side trying to tell the other side what to do there's the anti-abortion side for instance and there's the pro-choice side the pro-choice side is simply saying this is a question that we cannot legislate this is something for an individual's conscience you must decide this for yourself and you are free to do so under most circumstances there are some limitations of course which seem reasonable but the religionists does does not say that they say we know the answer we know what is right and you must ascribe to our beliefs around this you cannot do this or you must do that it is not your choice and those are two fundamentally different outlooks on life and you Manatee so we're out of time Ron well thank you so much we really appreciate you refreshing tell-it-like-it-is attitude and thanks for joining us on freethought matters well thanks for having me appreciate it very much and thank you for watching freethought matters because freethought matters [Music] [Music] hi i'm steve picker in my book enlightenment now i show that the world has become a better place as reason has been overcoming superstition and tribalism but the values of the Enlightenment are under attack that's why I'm a proud member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation the nation's largest association of free thinkers working to keep state and church separate please join me in supporting the Freedom From Religion Foundation to ensure that our government is driven not by religion but by reason [Music]

Channel: FFRF

Views: 47,066

Rating: 4.7399549 out of 5

Keywords: ron reagan, ronald reagan, nancy reagan, annie laurie gaylor, dan barker, freethought, FFRF, ballet, Not afraid of burning in hell, unabashed freethinker, political debates, commercial

Id: 7996hjxbJ_I

Length: 27min 39sec (1659 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020