Atheist Experience #927 with Matt Dillahunty and Jen Peeples

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hi this is Russell Glasser host of the atheist experience you know the atheist experience is made possible by volunteers and the generous support of viewers like you if the promotion of positive atheist culture and separation of church and state are values that you hold please consider contributing by becoming an ACA member or visiting our product page at evolve viscom under the partner tab thank you July 19th 2015 I'm Matt Dillahunty joining me the president the ACA Gen people's since I've added some complaints to her now ya know so this is a live public access television show out of Austin Texas and we'll have the number up although the lines are already full and you've got something that you're gonna talk about I did we don't have any like real real solid announcements today other than with all that you make the one about pride but I have a little kind of personal apology to make when I was in Vancouver for imagine a religion five I was supposed to meet up with Bryan sticks mo who wrote our theme song and unfortunately that didn't happen so Brian if you're watching sorry I let's see if we can't arrange to get together some other time but I still love this song so and I hear it all the time yeah alright so you had something a Facebook post oh yeah so in the wake of the Supreme Court decision a few weeks ago basically the marriage you destroyed the world yes yes that yeah the world was ending well Texas got invaded - yeah so by fire answer by you know Jade helm yeah anyway all that aside yeah so in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality we got a message on our Facebook page from a guy saying okay now that that the gays have you know equality now it's time for atheists to have equality and his idea was that we need to get these laws that are still on the books and some of the states that that say that you have to profess a belief in God in order to hold public office we need to get those stricken from the books because now that you know the gays have marriage equality that's the next big fight I've had this conversation welcome to 50 years ago yes I have this conversation with some deeply angry atheist at least twice a month sometimes more often who they're just outraged that this is still on the books and they can't understand how in the u.s. you know in 2015 we could still have have it be the case that atheists can't run for public office in certain places yeah this is all relates to something that we're gonna get to from one of the callers in a little bit because this I think qualifies as one of the bad arguments or bad issues that potentially damaging our credibility so what I want to say again I've talked about this so many times but again it's the same process that basically made marriage equality the law of the land that's the same process that means that atheists can run for public office in any state any locality you cannot outlaw atheists running for public office period and that decision was handed down in 1961 okay look up the tork ah so the Watkins decision 1961 okay most of the people who are outraged about this were born sometime after 1961 so there has never been a time in their lifetime when they could not run for public office as an atheist so please stop wasting time and energy and resources on this it's done yeah one of the things you know like herb Silverman had to fight this battle again because the because there's general ignorance about this it's it's one of those things where you know he's gonna run for office and there's this question of whether terkoz avi Watkins actually applies and or somebody doesn't know about it and so they challenge his ability to run for office an atheist and so he won again so it's not only did the Supreme Court you know make a decision in 1961 but this has been tested again in other venues right and we went now it's likely to be tested again but it's only gonna be tested because of ignorance and I think what what frustrates a lot of people is they say yes but it's still there yeah it always will be unless you completely rewrite the Constitution which is an unbelievably difficult process it will always say that the most you could ever do is pass an amendment that makes that initial language and Constitution nullified but you're probably not going to get that amendment passed because that's very difficult and this is an unpopular opinion and it is it is pointless because the Supreme Court's decision already renders that nullified so you're wanting to do work that you're not likely to be able to be successful at to achieve something that was already achieved 54 years ago right and and you know I go back to the the the law it was actually a constitutional amendment the state of Texas that banned gay marriage in Texas so marriage between two people of the same sex was already banned by statute anyway but the good christians of texas decided to waste the state's resources to get a constitutional amendments it's like extra ban it or something and so things been turbo banned to me right so we we extra banned gay marriage only if you read the wording of the constitutional amendment they passed they actually banned marriage in texas that's what happens when you try to go for double-secret probation that's right and and so that law that amendment to the constitution is still technically on the books but you know what it doesn't matter anymore texas is issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples it doesn't matter and that's the same thing that's happening with atheist running for public office you can run for public office if somebody challenges you and the last city council election in austin one of the people running for City Council actually challenged another City Council candidate saying oh he's an atheist and Texas law bans him from running for public office you know what you do with that you use that to point out the fact that they have just identified themselves as being someone who's uniquely unqualified to hold public office in this country because they don't understand anything about Supreme Court cases or case law in general and why would you want somebody representing you even on a city council that is so ignorant about history and law not to mention the flat-out bigotry exactly I'm assuming that you're not gonna be qualified to do your job just because you don't believe in their magical friend oh and by the way the person that she used to being atheists he's actually Catholic yeah well we have this happened we had this happen in Oh 408 I guess it was in North Carolina where two people running one eye because the other one being an atheist who was a Sunday school teacher by the way yes she just happened to meet with atheists because she wasn't one of those stupid and hateful individuals who thinks that it's irrelevant to talk to people you might disagree with yeah on one issue yeah ah it's frustrating on that note I guess we can probably just start with Mark okay in Detroit how you doing thanks for waiting hello yes I don't think I've ever actually talked to you two on the show but I have called in in the past cool so my question is basically how basically how bad is bad arguments to the movement does it does it how much of our credibility does it take away when we make a bad argument a lot I actually gave a talk it and in Kentuckiana in Vancouver yeah and Vancouver called hyperbole will destroy the world and it was I chose that title mostly out of amusement but it was about I hate bad arguments no matter who's making them but I especially hate them when they come from people who are ostensibly on my side of an issue because if you make a bad argument especially if you're in a position like ours where people are going to listen and perhaps think oh that's a good idea without doing more research on their own which I thoroughly discourage don't take anything we say at face value go out and research and think about it but there are people who will and then when they run up against somebody who knows what they talk they're talking about now the foundation behind what they believe is crumbling because somebody has pointed out how it's a bad argument and the view of atheists and secularists in general from the person who destroyed that horrible argument is is emboldened because they already thought that we didn't have any good reasons to hold the positions we hold so when you offer bad reasons and they easily knock them down this makes them think that they're even more right yeah one of the arguments that bugs me the most you've probably heard this one before and I hear this one all the time and it has to do with gay marriage is there like they go to the they go to the Leviticus one and then they say oh and you also can't use fabrics of two kind or you can't eat selfish and I'm like most Christians do not hold to that you're arguing against a straw man no you're not no you're not so if the Bible actually literally says something you're not saying that every Christian or every believer holds to that what you're doing is exposing that they don't in fact hold to that that they are now picking and choosing from the Bible and then the point of doing that is to say what is your reason for accepting this verse and rejecting this verse because I want to you know they have to have some now if they have a good reason to do that then fine it's not it's no longer an objection the problem is they don't seem to have a good reason for doing this the the reason I've usually heard and the reason why I don't usually do that argument because I think I think it is is they interpret Jesus came to unbiased the laws and yes I disagree with them on that but I don't want to argue I don't want to argue technicalities well that's the whole thing you're arguing because if Jesus said if Jesus saying I came not to change the law but to fulfill it and then not a jot or tittle will change until all these things go away then he's advocating for the law now you can you can make arguments that he wasn't advocating for all of it they will draw lines between ceremonial laws and sacrificial laws and things like that but they have to actually come up with a justification for it that's not just a post hoc rationalization so if you don't feel like actually discussing the theology by all means you don't you don't have to go anywhere near what the Bible says about anything but that doesn't mean that citing what the Bible actually says is in fact a bad argument or installment I I try to stick more to I try to stick more to things like Noah's Ark things that I can actually show and obviously if you don't believe in that I'm not gonna use that argument that strikes me as odd because when when the Bible says you know not to wear mixed fabrics and eat shellfish it's very very clear and very literal and it's there's almost no argument that this is metaphorical and yet there are huge swathes of people who are Christians who don't look at the Noah story as anything other than metaphor they don't believe that there was a global flood they may believe there was a local flood they may believe it was just a metaphoric story and so to opt out of the shellfish and into the Nova story seems to be kind of weaker footing unless you know that that's what somebody believes because if you if you talk about how absurd the Noah story is which I'm in favor of if their response is yeah but I don't think that was actually literal and I don't even think the Bible intends it to be viewed as literal well okay now people like debate with are really are fundamentalist and they actually try to explain yes the Noah's Ark story happened Jesus literally create our God sorry God literally created the earth in six days like they actually owes that much yes and so that's why I tend to do that obviously I'm learning from you guys I have learned to adapt to my arguments to who I'm talking to you to figure out what they actually believe and to construct an argument against that then to argue against some to get into a middle of an argument and then go oh wait you don't even believe that for instance my dad does not believe my dad believes how is the grave so if I was to have a conversation with my dad I couldn't say hey God's a horrible person because he sends good people to burn for all eternity because my dad doesn't believe Matt yeah in that case you flip it and you instead of saying that if they believe in like annihilation theory that the non-believers or whoever is undeserving or unchosen just ceases to exist then you still point out that he's playing favorites that he's picking and choosing who's going to get deliver forever and bliss and who's not absolutely but but I tried to cater I try to tell you where my arguments to who I'm speaking to and I and I learned that from I've learned that from watching shows like yours and getting better at debating by watching and learning that not everybody has the same arguments and not every arguments gonna work on the same people so we willing to adapt your argument for the person you're talking to I absolutely agree and on that note we're gonna we've got full lines so I'm gonna move on to another caller but thanks a lot mark appreciate it thank you and have a great day Thanks so and you had a question for up line one is not working can we put line 1 live there we go Jerry you there I am here how you doing doing good doing good how are you pretty good all right well I I love your stuff awesome work when I win the lottery which I don't play I'm gonna hook you up take care of you okay well I guess hey I guess since some people say it's the thought that counts all people all right well anyways I wanted you to possibly weigh in on what seems to be a big discussion and debate for some on whether it's okay to go around calling yourself an agnostic when you're really in need you stopped using that agnostic you know title it really doesn't work I'm fine with people I'm fine with people using whatever label they want but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to also point out the potential problems or confusion with it but I think you had something because you had asked about whether or not we agree with the Huxley's definition and right yes so can you can you summarize for the viewers what Huxley's definition of agnostic entails I'll read it it's really short quote it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty yeah so I don't think that absolute certainty is possible so everything Huxley just said is irrelevant yeah there's another ad Gnosticism in that way what would be the problem per se of saying I am agnostic well I mean if your argument for agnosticism is that you don't see a path to certainty with regard to either proposition you've completely first of all you there I don't see a path to certainty anywhere for anything you've misrepresented what knowledge means because virtually now granted we've come a long ways since Huxley but virtually no modern philosopher considers absolute certainty to be a component of knowledge the most normative definition is justified true belief which is not an appeal to certainty at all but the other thing is you're avoiding the issue because we assess individual statements like some God exists you either believe that or you don't there's no middle ground with respect to that statement there is a middle ground with respect to a question so if the question is does God exist the people who would say yes I believe that's the case are theists because they are accepting the proposition that God exists anybody who doesn't accept that proposition is a non theist and I would say an atheist in the weak sense and only the people who accept the proposition no gods exist would qualify as strong the strong atheist or anti theist or however you want to label the position but that position is irrelevant that would be what I would consider to be the null hypothesis and through this entire conversation it's about do you believe it do you think you have good reason to rationally accept it and belief and knowledge are not synonymous knowledge is a subset of belief so I if somebody says do you believe that God exists and you say I'm agnostic you have not answered the question in fact you did a lecture on this I did I did a couple different ways but I didn't want on belief in knowledge and I think it's I think it's posted on our website yeah with Venn diagrams and everything that look like Buddhist but I didn't know that when I put the Venn diagrams together now with what the very definition of God add to this discussion because you know God can be defined in so many different ways or perhaps a person could be an atheist in one sense and maybe not in another so this is what I thought you were getting at when you talked about Huxley's definition because Huxley specifically had this view that the proposition or the propositions about God were unknown and unknowable and I think that I'm fine with with accepting that they're unknown that we haven't solved this issue and I'm finally saying that so far it doesn't seem that it's possible for us to resolve it but to say it is unknowable especially when you're somebody like Huxley who's talking about certainty it seems to me that he's saying that the this topic is by definition impossible to assess and and forever will be when you say unknowable and I check to that because if there is in fact a God who manifests in reality in some detectable way then that's a testable proposition in fact everybody who believes or most of the people who believe and think they have good reasons for it are claiming to be little God detectors they believe in am also viable god they just can't defend it okay yeah you don't seem like you went too far I would agree with that now can we rule out the possibility to use a man analogy that we are some beings they like can't farm and not really know for sure that that is a possibility so I had an interesting discussion with Blake janta I debated him last week and we're going to be doing a podcast or two coming up his view is that everything is possible until it's demonstrated to be impossible and I reject that I think that possibility needs to be demonstrated and that impossibility needs to be demonstrated and until such time as either has been demonstrated than what you should say it is is that it is not possible and not impossible or that these two haven't been demonstrated so when you say can we rule this out no uh-huh just like we don't have a solution to hardtops ism I can't rule out the possibility that I'm at a brand that because I have currently no way to assess it that doesn't mean that it is forever unknowable or unaccessible right are you saying that you know maybe you were just creating Daleks well you really don't need to we should just you know take what we see and reason and whatnot and follow wherever it leads well I'm not sure we have much other choice if I understand your question correctly well I guess my point would be is that we you know like I say well what if we are some beings you know ant farm you know why should we even maybe I'm just specular why would she even bother thinking that in the first place oh I don't I don't think we should spend a whole lot of time about it on it and tell somebody demonstrates that there's good reason to spend a lot of time on it there are some big questions in philosophy that I did a podcast this week on the ship of theseus and the problem of identity and I don't think that's the problem that's particularly solvable and it may be so money because it's about language and how we label things I enjoy those conversations I enjoy thinking about those things and so do a lot other philosophers but they're not currently important and they don't become particularly important until we demonstrate that we're likely to be able to solve them and the EM that they're likely to have an impact there there are much bigger issues in every person's individual daily life and certainly more important issues for the world as long as there are still people starving and dying and subjected to religious indoctrination and other superstitious things that are causing harm so it doesn't really matter whether or not we have a solution to hard sauce is amour the ship of theseus or the problem of induction or whatever big philosophical issue some of us would like to sit around and think about those aren't nearly as important as the other issues yeah I would agree absolutely on but if you have those people that will make it that big of an issue and you know almost want to ostracize you know your you just call yourself the agnostic to get out of here you know there are some people seem to take it that seriously so oh just you know wondering where you weighed in on that yeah if I'm talking about something important somebody is wanting me to talk about something unimportant and they want to ostracize me good better things to do with my diet very well thank you thanks very ha I want to hold off on that one so that we can let's I'll let you do Josh if we can put three on so that I'm not the only one that talks on the show there we go hey Josh how are you pretty good so you had a budget yes I'm a Christian and I had a bit I had a couple questions if I could ask for one real quick okay my first question was what proof for evidence can you guys provide that would justify your reason for not believing in God well the question is not that we have to justify non belief is that you have to justify what you do believe so what's your proof or evidence that justifies your belief well the thing is though interior point but many people say that atheism is the lack of belief or disbelief and Gotha the thing is correct to me it doesn't really matter whether theism is the belief that God exists or whether there's just the lack of disbelief in God or what atheism is I really think evidence is mandatory for both sides no no I know there's a burden of proof evidence would be mandatory if we were asserting that God does not exist well but that's but the thing is though saying that I don't believe you I would like like if someone said there's a clip there's a cookie in the pantry and I said I don't believe you they may ask me to just buy that right no you don't need justification for not believing that there's a cookie in the pantry it's the default position yeah but the thing is not also believed brought up this thing that said if something doesn't if you can't prove something then you shouldn't believe it right yes well the thing is though then that really doesn't give me any reason to believe that there is no God well they don't know no because the no no you hold on because you said person a claims there's a cookie in the cabinet and I don't believe them that's not a belief it is it is a rejection of their claim I am not yet convinced that doesn't mean that I'm convinced there's no cookie in there it's just like in a court room we have a default presumption of of innocence and it's the prosecution as a to demonstrate guilt I find God not guilty of existing which is the not the same thing as it is innocent and the defense doesn't have to provide any defense if you can nobody really has been able to provide any convincing evidence that there is no doubt whether they asserted or not no one doesn't do that what difference that made a bit so I was talking to David Silverman one time and he said there is no God and okay so that doesn't mean he has the burden of proof sure call David and ask him to defend it I asked him to defend it yes and he said the problem of evil was is evidence ion does not exist look Johnny Josh I'm not David Silverman if you want to argue David Silverman's points you can call David Silverman if you want to argue our position you call us which one you want to do right sorry you asked for evidence that God exists yeah Jen Jen asked why you believe yeah well the thing is I believe because I don't think it's really logical to be a non-believer after what I've seen because I'm seeing the debates between atheists and theists but the thing is when I watch the debates many atheists and theists now agree that the universe had a beginning do you agree with that it depends very much on definitions okay so like do you believe that the universe had to begin like I said it depends on definitions and you know what I really think it's irrelevant to your claim that your God exists though because you say we're Christian so you better cific God what you're relevant I think this this whole I guess intellectual exercise about the beginnings of the unit is irrelevant because you believe in a specific God well but the thing is the way I see the atheist often used to argue that the universe is eternal and people have done and some people still do that now so are you once again trying to saddle us with some position that we don't hold because if you keep trying to get us to argue for positions that we don't hold I'm not going to continue the call no dude I'm just no no what I'm doing is I was just giving an example of something that people sometimes aren't you know Thea saying that the astute theists used to argue for the omni's that God was omnipotent omnipresent omniscient and omni-benevolent but modern theologians have refined that so that they're no longer logically self contradictory instead when they talk about omnipotence they don't mean all-powerful they mean maximally powerful all-powerful that is like really possible and we know what victory sorry what caution victory what was that self contradictory how is what self contradictory omnipotence I'm yes exactly how that can God make a rock so big he can't lift it watch it gets part of his nature no no no no that doesn't answer the question at all do you believe that God can violate the laws of logic no okay then you like mud then you like most modern theists reject the original versions of omnipotence which would literally because he doesn't deny his nature does there are some things but there's a difference in saying that someone does not deny the nature that self conflict it seemed that someone can deny their nature I'm not interested in your post hoc rationalizations or your denial of what I'm saying you don't believe something and I'm pointing out why because it because of the naive the naive claim of omnipotence has been demonstrated to be logically contradictory this is why theologian is adequate as a square circle the square circle is also self contradictory yes which is why it doesn't exist right exactly right this is why this is why Jesus the Christ Josh if you don't let me finish a sentence I'm gonna hang up on your heads hi all right this is why I'm trying to help you not be stupider in your argument there's a reason why the old view of omnipotence was tossed aside by the people who believe that God is all-powerful and the new version is maximally powerful that it God hat God has all power all possible power that is not logically contradictory that solves all the problems that the old version of omnipotence had so now they can claim that there's a god that is maximally powerful which is by the way I think what you would accept right well right now I'm not talking about an omniscient God or anything right now I'm just talking about evidence for God right no making a claim to omniscience I'm not making a claim down that they're not making a claim on the benevolence right now I'm just talking about evidence ok ok ok we tried to get you to talk about that before but he asked you for evidence what you talked about was an outdated version of the definition of a universe and what I would have responded with is that people there's now a distinction in the modern world between for example the cosmos which is everything it's the the umbrella term which may include the multiverse or many universes or alternate realities the cosmos being everything that has ever existed and under that model it's not necessarily clear that the cosmos in fact had a beginning at all ok what evidence is there that the that is eternal I didn't know ok it's eternal no when we just said that there's no evidence to believe that it had a beginning but that doesn't mean it didn't have a beginning is not evidence about actually actually what that statement means absence of evidence is not evidence for absence is true but absence of evidence is evidence for absence when evidence would be expected here's me I tell you what Josh interrupts me before I finish the sentence again and you can listen on hold I'm getting ready to tell you if you would just have a measure of patience absence of evidence is evidence for not confirmation of but evidence for absence in the cases where evidence would be expected for example if you were to say I have a dead human cadaver in the trunk of my car and we go out and we open your trunk and we find no cadaver that is an absence of evidence for your claim which you can come up with post hoc rationalizations for by saying that well it got moved or it got shuffled away by corpse of course removing Pixies or it's invisible but it is in fact evidence for the conclusion that you are wrong it isn't on its own enough confirmation to be confirmation that you're wrong and it but the nature of the claim that you have that you have a dead body in your trunk is something that you have to provide evidence for and if we can look at the claim and say if this claim were true we would see a B C D and E and then we go out and we find naught a naught B naught C naught D naught E then that absence of evidence is evidence against your claim it is not enough to confirm that your claim is false but it is evidence against the proposition it's the same on both sides though because that if there's an absence of evidence that there is no God then I can say the same thing for you know the user and I know that you're not asserting that right now yes yeah you just keep right on bringing it up and every time every single time we've offered an example you want to reframe the example in terms of the contrary when we say there's no good reason to believe that the cosmos isn't eternal you made it as it as if we're saying it is eternal and want to provide want us to provide evidence for it that wasn't been claimed we made let me ask you this though so let's say John Doe killed doc masters let's say that what Susan area that's John don't kill do what buck masters okay John Doe killed buck masters okay so the cops are investigating but they had no evidence that buck that he killed buck masters that okay is that really evidence that buck didn't do it it is evidence against the the proposition if there would be evidence if we would expect evidence for it is it confirmation that he's innocent no how does it prove that he didn't do it it doesn't but if that's the case then how has been if that's the case and that means really it's not evidence because no criminal many criminologist will tell you this I don't really see how are you a criminologist I'm not a criminal do you have any expertise in the field or are you just parroting what you've heard what do you mean well if I see you're going to go to criminologists and neither one of us is a criminologist I don't know why we would go to that when I would hope that we would both agree that it is up to the prosecution to present evidence that John Doe did in fact kill buck Masterson and absent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt we must rule not guilty okay yes or no well that makes that parchment that fortune makes sense because correct if somebody if somebody claims that a God exists they believe that not what which I did not do okay so you're not claiming a God exists so you're not a Christian no I believe I believe that God exists okay so if somebody claims that they believe that a God exists I believe that a God exists you believe it like you believe that claim is true I believe that God exists right you say that okay usually you get that you don't believe that digest right I do not believe your claim please make your case it's let me give you some philosophical reasons student that's not that thing you never let me give you a philosophical reason why now let's answer the actual question that was asked and get philosophical things can be evidence because there's no they know how is it not are you saying that philosophy is dead no actually I spend a great deal of time studying and arguing philosophy I'm saying that without a tie to anything material or epistemic you have no case so and I'm considering that the considerably Josh considering your inability to construct a proper argument so far and your failure to understand that a disbelief of a claim is not a belief in its con cherry I'm not convinced you could make a philosophical argument okay do you believe that the universe is fine-tuned student hawking does excuse me like the universe is precisely Stephen Hawking is doesn't believe in a God correct well no but that's not the point so that's not the point the point is he believes that the universe is fine-tuned no the universe is fine-tuned in the sense that you're implying by an agent he accepts that there's an appearance of fine-tuning the anthropic percent principle which doesn't require any sort of intervention from a supernatural agent I'm not I'm not implying that you identify now I'm just asking if you believe that the universe is fine-tuned yeah no well it depending what yeah what do you mean by fine-tuned what I mean by fine-tuned is their physical constants in the universe that we live in in other words if you change even one physical constant in even the slightest way there'd be a universal catastrophe many many people not believe this not just yes atheists believe this too like I said like Stephen yeah he agrees yes please next okay but the thing is I would like to ask you if that is true how would you explain that okay goodbye yeah that my friend hang up on line three because my things not working thank you that my friend is the beginnings of an argument from ignorance fallacy or actually argument from personal incredulity that here's something that we don't seem to have an explanation for and if you can't explain it therefore I'm justified in its in accepting that my magical explanation is real this is the same thing that was asked of me in a different context when somebody talked about how much and Moses seemed to know about physics in reality and how did he know that if it wasn't divine intervention and even if I have no answer to the fine-tuning of the universe that doesn't get us one nanometer closer to your proposition that your explanation that a God did it is more reasonable this is why not only can you not construct a proper philosophical argue proper valid and sound argument you are in way out of your depth because you're just talking about as many different things as you can you are so horribly confused about the topics that you even reference talking as if an appeal to an authority would be enough to make me question oh no because what you think of is fine-tuning and what you draw from it is completely different from the one of the foremost experts in the field that you cited you actually have to come with something really strong to get over scientific consensus you have to come up with something really strong to show that the greatest minds who have looked at this are wrong not that they're necessarily right not that because somebody at some Authority says it makes it right or that it's right and tell it is just this is the most reasonable explanation until such time as you demonstrate that it's wrong but if we're in a position where there's no explanation where we have no idea why the universal confidence excuse me are the way they are and you think that you do have an explanation and your explanation is the God of the Bible you cannot come with what you can't explain that tide goes in tide goes out you can't explain that now wonder Silverman didn't finish talking to you yeah okay so can we talk to will because he emailed us about this yes we'll talk to will and then we'll get to can in a moment so hang tight all right hey well thanks for waiting through that hi guys thanks for taking my call yeah no problem so to recap what the email was it was probably going to be a little more boring than the last call I have a nine-year-old daughter who is here with me and we wanted to call in be called a little last week she has been having some fear or uncomfortable feelings when thinking about dying and I know all of the things that we as atheists particularly say to other adults about the prospect of death being the end of everything and when talking with my wife I've found that talking to an adult is significantly different than talking to a child for me especially because as a Christian being raised as a Christian and now an atheist this wasn't the fear I had as a child because there was heaven proposition it was very something and the responses about you know nothing isn't particularly a bad thing and you remember before you being born as being bad and think about all of the life you've got to live before and all the great things they're gonna happen they're not as comforting with child as they are naturally to adults well it's open maybe Jim as kind of the the atheist parenting representative on the show in many cases do you have you had this conversation with your Canada circle well I mean they're one of the reasons that I wanted to take your call is because we're actually confronting a similar situation with our son my wife and I am turns out our brother-in-law was recently diagnosed with cancer and it's a it's a pretty grim diagnosis okay and so we're approaching that conversation with our son we've broached it briefly we haven't gotten very much into specifics but he knows that his uncle Tim is very sick and that basically he's not going to survive this hasn't been real for him yet because he hasn't seen his uncle since the diagnosis we've got a family trip coming up in a few weeks and he's gonna see firsthand what this is you know what his uncle's going through and what his cousins are going through so you know I know we're going to have this conversation I think that there's not any sort of thing necessarily one thing you can say to a child in this situation that's going to make them more comfortable with it or less fearful about the only thing you can do is encourage them to continue talking about their feelings and I know that my son tends not to talk about his feelings at first and at some point you know the barriers come down and then you know usually it's lots of crying and everything and then we get a lot out of him at that point but you know we work with him through that we we tried to support him emotionally we've had situations where a pet died or something like that so we kind of know how he handles grief a little bit we're really not sure how it's gonna play out with this situation and I know you're dealing with a very similar situation with your daughter is it that she's afraid of her own mortality or for someone else well the way she's expressed it is that she's afraid of being dead and it being nothing I think it's related to very something you just said I think it's related to it to my own cancer diagnosis it's not fatal not immortal or anything but I think scary but her expression of it has been in thinking about being dead and dying and being afraid of it being something okay yeah yeah so first of all I don't have any kids so I should probably shut up but I'm terribly shutting up I normally when I talk to people about this I do what you mentioned earlier which is what was it like to not be alive yet because that's so far as we know that's what it would be like to be to be dead there's no such thing as being dead you know and so I don't see that there's anything in particular to be afraid of to me what I struggle with is is the loss and what we talk about quite often in the community is about you know the value of life and when I look at it it's like she's what nine so I don't know when her birthday is but I would imagine has she had a really good birthday party oh cool that birthday party ended at some point if we were to spend the entire birthday party worried about when it was going to and and what it was gonna feel like to no longer be at the birthday party that would ruin the party and I tend to look at it in this in this pragmatic sense of I want to have fun at the party and I want the party to be good so since I can't do anything about the fact that it's going to end and at some point in the future I'm going to be in a situation where I'm no longer at the party I can't change that but I can change what I do right now and that's gonna that's going to determine how good that party is and that analogy stretches all the way throughout life that yes it's incredibly sad when we lose people that we love when they die when they no longer exist we have their memories though which we can value and we have the time that we spent with them and I tend to look at my own life I don't worry about what its gonna be like to be dead because I don't think that that's a coherent it doesn't make sense to me it won't be like anything it's not anything I just stopped existing but I am I'm fairly confident for them for some period of time there are people who are in my life now who will have fond memories they look back on the fun things we did the time that said something stupid on the show or the time we wouldn't saw this movie or that one cool party we had and they will have those things and while I won't still be alive in any real sense I'll be alive and in the only sense that I can think of that matters and those things actually make me happier what I love to live forever or seemingly forever yeah yeah everybody I have all of our ancestors throughout history have tried to find ways to avoid death and sat around worrying about what happens after death I think if we start earlier teaching people that death is a natural part of this process of life so that they developed the tools early of how to cope with it then we hopefully will have less anguish during the during the process of dying and immediately after and we can get on to the point of healing and valuing life because if all we do is sit around about it we've we've crippled the only life that we know we're gonna have if it turns out after life there's some bonus after life great then you know that's like that's like finding out that the party gets to keep going when you thought it was going to be over yeah and I think that's actually a really good advice for a young kid had a similar conversation with our son last year because he was obsessing over you know the end of summer vacation and it's you know it was just in tears because the summer vacation was over and he didn't want it to be and so you know we had to have this conversation with him about you know yeah but you're ruining you know all the excitement with school starting back up and you've got a new year ahead of you and there will be holidays coming up his favorite holiday is Halloween and that's just around the corner and you know and after a while he started to realize that yeah you know you can't worry about the fact that summer vacation is gone you got other things to look forward to now and I think it's the same thing with you know preparing kids for death and I think something Jen said earlier is not to be overlooked we talked about you know we both kind of alluded to ruining the party by worrying about when it ends don't ever beat yourself up for how you feel about something right if if in fact you're sitting at the party and you start to worry about oh my gosh it's gonna end and I don't want it to end and that's so sad that's perfectly normal and understandable and acceptable and when you recognize that this is a natural process of how you feel and how you think about things that will help you deal with it so that it perhaps has less impact later but those feelings aren't wrong or bad it's just you and we're all like that none of us want to die none of us want the party to be over it matter of fact my favorite quote from Christopher Hitchens has nothing to do with with religion it was during the time of as he was dying when he said it's not at all like people suspect that that you're being told the party is about to be over in his view you're being told the party's going to continue but you have to leave and that was the part that that kind of hurt him and I I think that's incredibly telling about who we are and how we feel about things and never ever beat yourself up too much over how you feel about him just be aware of it and and cherish that too because that's what makes you special and shows that you know you care about life and you care about people and you care about yourself and all those things are good yeah and then I guess the last thing I would say is it sometimes you know when a kid has lost someone or something important to them and they just become you know overwhelmed with grief then the best thing you can do is just acknowledge that and and just be there for them hello thank you thank you thank you we definitely make a difference every week thank you very much thanks well thanks so one of the calls that I was wanting to actually take he bailed has evidently hung up he wanted to challenge my claim that I'm more moral than the God of the Bible I think that would have been a pretty good challenge though yeah because I mean depending on what your definition of what you think about the God of the Bible if you think he did in fact drown almost everybody except for eight people I'd never do that so I win yeah I also don't put men and women as in equal to the point where women are basically property and slaves I don't endorse slavery I don't endorse beating people as long as they don't die within a couple days I don't endorse the idea of eternal torment or eternal annihilation for finite crimes or worse yet thought crimes where someone is just living an intellectually honest life and saying I can't believe this because they don't have insufficient evidence and then punishing them for that and I would never allow my child to be tortured in my place you know just because I couldn't think of a better way to solve a problem and I certainly wouldn't hide playing the world's longest time of hide and seek expecting people to find me when I have the power to be unfindable and then fill people's heads with ideas about life and death that they have no good reason to be to think are true so that even lifelong atheist sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a fear of the hell that they were indoctrinated with and if this were to happen on my watch as god I would step in and correct it and that doesn't happen I'm not only not only am i more moral than the God of the Bible so are you so it's almost every single person I've ever met including some horrible people perhaps even some serial killers who just haven't killed as many people as the God of the Bible is reported to have done we've got time for one or two more let's see let's see we got almost six minutes so oh about five counting well here's somebody calling from Ireland so is it Cara and Longford yes thank you for wearing me oh wow I can't believe I'm through until my two favorite hosts as well awesome hi and - yeah I just came over all still free I apologize and so I wanted to talk about you you promote positive atheism and the separation of church and state so I'm curious about how that works in a place like America that has it doesn't have a state-sponsored religion to the extent that Ireland does for example I can't say I'm an atheist I have to say non Catholic and sort of explain from there because there isn't there isn't a word in my small town my small community for a theist that is satisfactory to the people I interact with you know we have we as we don't have separation of church and say in terms of like Easter and Christmas and things everything shuts down everything shuts down into there everything gets down here too for almost everything for Easter and Christmas actually mostly Christmas and that's actually just a matter of practicality because Christmas despite having some fairly strong Christian origins is not in fact a Christian holiday at least not the way it's celebrated in the West when you ask people listed five or ten things that they first think of when they think of Christmas Jesus and anything religious would be lucky to crack the top five because the things that they think of you know presents and dinner with family and snow and snowmen and trees and shopping and none of those things are our Christian and some of them I mean Christian was actually expressly outlawed by Puritans and others who were Christian so it's kind it's just kind of practical for the United States to make this a federal holiday because they know almost everybody's going to take that day off anyway because the bulk of the population celebrates it's like 90% of Americans or more celebrate Christmas and only 70 percent are Christian 70 percent and some of the Christians don't celebrate it so I mean it's a big deal but as far as church-state separation I don't know that you can actually get proper church-state separation when you have a state religion but there are ways to lobby for laws that would establish something at something like church-state separation that would say yes in fact we have a state I would actually be lobbying to abolish the state religion and there are places that have done that it's just you know in the UK well in and it's going to be different in Ireland and I apologize in the UK the C of E is pretty much a big joke and nobody really cares that there's a state religion because it does just doesn't factor into much of anything in Ireland it's different very different you say that Christmas is about you know family and stuff here it's about are you going to midnight mass or morning much yes I'm not going to either what's wrong with you yeah you know I think I think what you need go ahead know what I was gonna say is one of the things that you can do in this is if you're comfortable being out as an atheist is to be be open with the fact that you don't believe I mean this is one of the things that I think turned the tide for the whole gay rights movement was people being open about it and not hiding in a closet no I understand that and I mean that's a huge thing and my family atheists well my mother tell you she's a pagan on a bad day but well then but also I do a lot of volunteer work in my small town and I'm interacting with nuns quite regularly and these are women who've dedicated their lives to doing good and while they've done that in the name of a religion I can't find myself to take it against then so I hate to cause offence yeah and what you may find is that a lot of them a lot of them may not actually believe the religious supernatural aspects we have you know the the clergy project worldwide which is talking to people who are members of the clergy who don't actually believe anymore we're finding this to be more common I my hope is that someday you'll be able to say you're an atheist and people the Catholics around you won't be confused because we've educated well just gonna have to deal with yeah you can be responsible for their emotional reaction to saying who you are yeah I apologize but we've apologized but we've run completely out of time they're actually getting ready take the credits up you can try call back again next week or you can email us TV at atheist - community org and write emails you before and you email me back a really nice message Matt so thank you oh good know you're one of the five then like six thousand unread email yeah thank you cars so much for calling I appreciate it thanks to all the people who make this show possible and our studio audience who's joined us this week we'll be going to Illinois after the show and this I hope you'll stop by [Applause] you

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Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 71,153

Rating: 4.8619556 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: b4KRv_dX5h0

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2015

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