Talk Heathen 08.22 with Sofia Spina and Doctor Ben

At what point can we finally say that being religious doesn't make anyone a better person. We can talk all day long about how many chances are given to abusive men in churches, how predators are held up in religious communities as leaders and their victims are driven out or silence. We can watch as the most avidly religious among us advocate for continued military violence, violently turning refugees away at

the border who are just seeking safety. We can watch them ban books that tell the truth about history, actively lie about and to sort scientific findings, regardless of the harm that they may cause, so long as it advances their agenda, and deprive their own children of knowledge while filling them with hate for those who are different from them. And this isn't even a complete list of things that I have seen religious folks do lately. It's just what I thought

of all I was sitting on the couch in five minutes. It doesn't include anything historical. This is all happening right now. So when we just give up this charade that religious people are more moral than those who or not, And if religion doesn't make anyone or anything better than what's the point to save souls? Do any of these things that I just said sound like something a

saved soul would do. So whether you find yourself shouting at the screen in agreement or think I'm being a horrible heathen wench, then give us a call because the show is starting now. Hello, doctor Ben, how are you all right? How about you? I'm doing well. Welcome everyone. Today is June second, twenty twenty four. I am Sophia Spina, and as I just mentioned, this is doctor Ben, who I'm very excited to be

hosting with. Like, we've not hosted together before. No, this is our very first time, and I'm surprised honestly because it feels so natural the way we've been talking with each other, and it seems like we have already done shows together, but I guess this is the first one. So I feel like you're just really interesting to listen to. So I'm like, yeah, it's nice to just, you know, get to get to know you a little bit too. So, yeah, a brand new pairing, just

so we all know. Takithan is a product of the Atheist Community of Austin, a five oh one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking secular humanism and the separation of religion and government. Talkithen is a live call in show and we have open lines, so get your calls in at five one two nine nine one nine two four to two or from

your computer you can call at tiny dot c C slash call THH. That's c A L L T H. And all that information is also on the screen right now, right below, so you don't have to wait for me to say it again. You can just plug on in there. So yeah. So, also, uh, happy Pride Month, doctor Ben, you mentioned before we got on You're like, this is the first show of Pride Month, and I hadn't even thought about and I felt I was like, oh my gosh, Yeah, we have to say something about that. Yes,

yes, for sure. And we even have a super chat that came in before the show from Miranda Rensburger gives five dollars, saying that I won't be able to stay for the live stream, but just wanted to say Happy Pride Month. Happy Pride Months, everybody. This is the first Talk Heathen of Pride Month, and I'm very excited that it gets to be our show. We also got another super chat from Puck. Guests five dollars saying, say, minimal praise for inimital plays in a liminal space. That's I can't

even speak the words that Puck is saying. I want to try minimal praise for inimitable plays in a liminal space. But I had to pause really long there. I feel like a cheated That's a hard one. But yes, Happy Pride Month to everybody. Very excited to be part of this heathen heathen his community of queers and everybody else alike. So wear your rainbow shor rainbow spirit in the side chat. I'm excited to be able to share that with all of you today. Yeah. I had a really happy experience last night

where I'm not going to mention the brewery. It is less we get in trouble because this is Texas, but there were it was this awesome, like very family friendly brewery. There's kids running all around, there's a drag queen getting ready to perform in the background, and some like middle aged cheerleaders because that's a thing good why not? And then there's like a couple of booth tabling about like sexual health and all these It was like this is they have

amazing I love this brewery. They have amazing food trucks and I can't drink beer right now, but they do have amazing beer when I can and vibe. And I was just like, what a lovely little world right now of all of these people kind of coming together and it's not a big deal because it shouldn't be. And what a kind of fun Saturday night to have like

drag queens and playgrounds. You know, absolutely, And I know that there's a lot of talk in the media frequently about people being very upset about Pride and things associated with You see lots of videos of people intentionally avoiding crosswalks with the Pride flag on them. You see people climbing up a railing for some stairs to get to a transport platform or something, and like there's the painting of the Pride flag along that and so they tried to climb up the railing

so they wouldn't have to touch the Pride flag. There's a lot of things like that that we're seeing. But this this holiday, like this month of Pride is yes, it is celebrating the right to survive and exist and to be authentically you. And yeah, the focus is on the queer community, but it's not exclusively celebrated by the queer community. This is for everybody. This is a celebration of being authentically you and being allowed to be authentically you.

And so even if you're not part of the LGBTQ plus community, that is okay. You are allowed to celebrate with us. We welcome you to celebrate with us, just on the grounds that you're going to be respectful. And you know, I literally that's it, Like just be respectful, be as a person, and like, like it's not that hard. You don't have to change who you are, and we don't expect anybody to change who you are. Unless you're an asshole, then you can maybe change that.

That's a personal choice, though, and it is your choice to be an asshole. It's not a choice to be gay. It's not a choice to be trand it's not a choice to be straight. It is a choice to be rude. It's a choice to be welcoming, it's a choice to be all these other things. So this is not to like exclude anybody, but to welcome everybody in that community. So I hope that everybody can celebrate pride with us and don't feel that just because you aren't part of that community.

It doesn't mean that you're not welcome to join in. So I love that. I also love who in your side be like just don't just be respectful. And then there was like no other and just like and that's it. That's all you have to do. It doesn't feel like it's like this really high bar you know, to navigate, unlike a fence, which I guess people are climbing to avoid Pride flags. I wonder what they think will happen. Will they be contaminated, will they suddenly come queer magically because they've touched

a Pride flag? Like it's leading It almost sounds like, I don't know,

it's so highly superstitious. It was really bizarre way right. It's funny too, because I mean leading into a lot of the interesting discussions we have with many theists, but at least the people that I was raised around, the type of Christianity that I practiced, like, we often believed that God was so powerful and that God could do all of these things, and that there wasn't anything in this world that could overcome God's love and God's sense of

justice and God's plan. But somehow, you know, if God's plan for you is to be straight. Stepping on a pride flag just completely overrides that. Talking to gay people completely overrides that show shown up to the bride in a too, too completely overrides whatever God's plan was for your sexuality. And it's interesting to think, like, what forces here are more powerful in this sense? Like, is God's plan overthrown so easily by a pride flag?

What is this saying about your theology? What is this saying about you know, your position in general? And it's very interesting. Yeah, it is hard to buy the whole love the sinner, hate the sin thing, which

is bullshit for so many reasons in the first place. But when people behave out of this deep seated fear of anything that they may view as I don't know, emblematic of the queer community, not to bring up something that's like totally left field, But now I'm going to bring up something totally left field that I found so funny is that the people who fear queerness so much, and their main representative, who I would argue is Andrew Chate, recently came

out and said that it is gay to have sex with women. So we've fully, you know, full circle that that I guess you're so scared of feeling any kind of joy that you know, we gotta we got to keep all genitals on lockdown all the time unless it's for procreation. So you're so really amazing you're so afraid of being gay that now your definition includes everybody to

some extent, everybody is gay. So I don't know if that's achieving the goal that they want to or if it's just you know, people want to be part of our community and they're like finding ways to become part of it without explicitly saying so, which if that's the case, Like no, like I mean, you could just you could just be nice and join our community. Like, like I said, it's not that hard to do. But

we do have a couple more super Chats we have. Uh. David Tech is a new member and says Pride Month, Thank you David Tech and David Tech not only gave super Chat and became a new member, but also gifted twenty others talking to the memberships to people in the community. And this is this is so pride with us about my friends, Like we got somebody sharing the love. So thank you so much. That is absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much, David, and that, yeah, I love that.

So moving on to question of the Week real quick, just because I'm like, I feel like I could just talk to you. Yeah, but we do have a talk heathen to me. So the talk hethn to me segment is when we get into the question of the week. Last week we asked you why is God so obsessed with sex? Wrong answers only, and here are our top three answers. You want to you want to go ahead and give us the top three there, doctor Ben, Yeah, God's obsessed with

sex because humans keep calling out his name during orgasm. That is amazing. Michael Johnson composers later wrote that, which is like, that is great. I feel like it would be kind of It's like getting a page and you're like wait what oh man, you know, like there's kind of a maybe just feels like a false alarm going off and God's like rats again. So, yeah, God likes to be in the room, the room where it happens. Yes, indeed, he likes to be in the room where it

happens, and so he Yeah, it's a very weird dynamic. I'm not judging God's you know, sexual preferences, but you know he could, he could allow for some more consent in that instead of you know, saying, I'm just going to be there in that room watching you, and if he could ask first, that would be preferable. It's not really his style, you know, consent, but there's that It kind of reminds me of in middle school dances when people talk about like leave room for Jesus. I don't

like the implication of that is that Jesus is like grinding on you. Instead, like that there's a whole Jesus sized person between you and your partner in middle school and he's just in there, and that feels kind of weird when I stop them think about it in that way, that's super weird. Anyway, Moving on number two from X million seventeen oh four, God's obsessed with sex. We're not sure why. However, he made a universe full of

holes that suck for some reason. Apparently. Yeah. I mean there's so many, so many holes, so many there's so many in space, there's so many in humans, there's so many in every other animal. There's so many holes around nature. There's I don't know if we're talking about if we think about themes within creation or themes within the scriptures and everything. I know there's a trend to when something repeats multiple times, we tend to latch onto

that and think, oh, this is important, this is meaningful. So that's a really good point. Maybe there is more significance to the fact that everything has holes in them. I don't know that answer, and so many of the holes. Yeah, it are compelling when we stop and think about how gravity works and how you have black holes. That are you know, just these crazy epicenters of gravity, right, Like, that's that's fundamentally what a black hole is. And I guess God also created the force of gravity

and sex would be more difficult without it, so true. Thanks question Mark. Anyway, then our number one is from Ben Peacock. God is obsessed with sex because it's been two thousand years since he got nailed. Too soon. This is this is absolutely brilliant. That should be on a T shirt that somebody just wears in public. Maybe it's a little too much, but I think that's hilarious. That's that's gold. Yeah, I think that that

is incredible. It's like the kind of perfect combination of like almost almost feels too far, but also why I'm like, who is it a fen ding all the right people? Just that is incredible. So we also have a prompt for next week, and the prompt is what is Jesus really saving us from? Enter your best answer below this video in the comments, and next week we will be able the top three answers. But let me get your

answer, doctor Ben, what is Jesus really saving us from? Well, based on our talks backstage, which maybe we'll get this we all know from. More specifically, he's saving us from the Pride flag itself. Flag flag is sinful and Jesus is saving us from the Pride flag. I love it. Yeah, Jesus just comes in and takes all the Pride flag for himself, kind of like a you know, no kind of moment in a movie.

Yeah, just throw your Pride flags at Jesus, I guess and that works because I really well, that is a great answer, and I'm anxious to see what our audience comes up with. So in the comment section, give us your best answer and tune in next week when we reveal our next talk three. During talk Ethan Jumy, I also want to take a second to think all of the people who make the show possible. So if we could go to the crew cam and think, look at all those amazing,

lovely people and a poppy Oh my goodness. Sorry, clearly that was exciting for me. Yeah, thanks to all of the video and audio people, moderators, notes, the people who do notes and stamps and call screeners like we are the people you see, but there there are so many people behind the scenes who make this happen every single week. Like we come on sometimes and you know, we have a rotating schedule of hosts, but these folks are consistent and every single week make this happen, so it is amazing.

Also, they're just delightful people, Like that's I feel excited when we get to talk to them and interact with them because they're just wonderful. Yeah. Absolutely, we love the crew. Everybody else should also love the crew. They are absolute superheroes and they do things that I sure as hell could not be doing, like you don't want me touch it, you don't want me touching those buttons, like you'll be broadcasting to I don't know, some we

just would accidentally mess everything up. So the crew is wonderful. We love them, yeah so much. They're great. So this is kind of like a weird. It feels like a hard right turn. So we're talking about like Pride Month and how exciting that is, and you were talking about watching an exorcism video. Yes, it had a little bit of overlap at least into some of what we're discussing. Do you want to tell us about that,

Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. And if there's anybody in the audience that has thoughts about kind of the culture around these exorcism videos, or if you have a story about something like this. But the culture primarily within the Pentecostal or like charismatic churches especially, there's so many famous people that have made videos and posted them about exercising the demons out of people. And there are a few very popular people, especially there's one in front

of South Africa. There's a few others, but it's very interesting. Number one, the person I was watching is a woman doing these exorcism which is funny because you're in these very very anti woman pastor type churches and yet these are people that are becoming super popular, which, like in any other context, I would have no problems with this, But it's not the fact that they're women that they're the problem. It's because they're exercising demons out of people

unnecessarily that it's the problem. But it's just interesting that it contradicts with their you know, underlying theology. But whatever. So this lady does the typical style of that a lot of others do, where you have people coming into the church and they're for some reason, they're always like hunched over and they're like almost like filming at the mouth, like just like snarling and like making

all these weird like animal noises. Like the trope around like demon possession is very interesting about why if a demon were to possess a human, why that would be the go to posture. Why would this be how they decide to carry it out. I don't know. If I were a demon possessing a human, maybe I would if I were actually trying to do horrific things, or if I was trying to corrupt humanity, I would try to be as

natural as possible probably and not be trying to stick out. But either way, these people show up and they're like seizing all over the place and like they're speaking in tongues and stuff. But the most interesting ones you have people coming to her for their HIV they're coming to her her for marriage difficulties, they're coming for being gay, you know, I mean that's a more common

one. And so she's like praying to dispel these demons of HIV. And so she claims and tells a person that you are cured of your HIV with this prayer. She does the same thing with autism. She does the same thing with this people's divorce. Like they show up and they're about to get divorced, and she says, like, I denounce the spirit of divorce, and they start screaming and crying, and then I don't know the outcome of

that whole thing, but it's just amazing. Number one, to see these people like flocking and I'm not sure how many of them are legitimately seeking those services or how many of them are plants in the audience, because I'm sure there's a mix of people, but this is super dangerous. For one. And number two, you get kind of a taste of like which things matter most to this church population and what things don't. Like When the person's like

gay desires left his body, the crowd goes wild. When you see someone's autism be expelled from them, the crowd goes wild as if this is such a miraculous thing. Then on the flip side, you have this like about to divorce couple, and the crowd's just like okay whatever. So like, clearly autism and gay identities are far worse than a divorce, But it's just it's a very interesting dynamic. And I know you had some thoughts about this as well, with how these are played out and like, and even more

when they affect children. And I was just kind of blown away by the fact that, like people really think that HIV can be dispelled by just saying things like or that depression and anxiety can just be cured by just saying some words, which I think if it actually did work, I don't know many people that would not try that. Like, I don't know many people that'd be like, yeah, no, I'm okay. I just I just hate Jesus too much to say these necessary words. Like I feel like if it

worked, we'd have a lot more people being helped by this. Yeah. I think that it's this desperation to that drives people to seek this kind of of help, because we think about the idea of like someone who is suffering

from an illness or someone who has depression in an extremely severe way. And I really wonder if all of these folks backgrounds are actually believing in demons or are they just like nothing else has worked, and here's someone who's telling me they have something that will work, and it's praying upon folks who are really vulnerable at that time and just want any leaf, and so they end up believing in Charlatan's which this cannot be anything but that when we were talking earlier,

you're right, like, for me, I tend to be very upset by anything happening to kids like that's it's children are just sort of my heart. I guess I don't know how to describe that. But I did see an exorcism video once where this girl who was like seven years old was watching a lot of mermaid content on YouTube and she was really into mermaids, and so her parents decided she had like a demon of a mermaid sort of inside

of her and that that needed to be exercised from her. And so this crying, clearly upset seven year old is put in this situation with people screaming and wailing, and she knows enough about this performance that she's kind of putting on this like you know, like answering kind of as the demon. But she's clearly so upset, and the preacher is talking about, yeah, and

you're not gonna you're gonna let go of this little girl. And then once the exorcism is complete, like basically, once they've traumatized this poor kid enough, as she gets increasingly upset because I guess that means the exorcism is working, they eventually ask like, so you're going to watch YouTube videos of mermaids

anymore? And she's like no, And so just watching this kid who is in this situation, all of these adults are screaming at her, all of her responsible adults in her life that normally would give her comfort are not giving her comfort, are actively participating in this. She has nowhere to turn, she has nowhere to go and be like. She doesn't have the wherewithal to say this is really weird, this is really messed up. She's a child

who's being I say, this is absolutely abuse. And anytime I think you traumatize a child this way intentionally for no benefit other than to scare them out of watching a YouTube videos too much, is disgusting to me. And I don't know the parents' background. I mean, maybe they went through similar things when they were young, but it doesn't justify anything. So that broke my

heart. And I think that when we think about like exorcisms and demons, I look at how vulnerable people are when they're in these positions to bring themselves or bring their child, and how helpless they must feel in general that the only thing they can do is turned to someone who just screams a lot about

demons and hopes they hope that will work. Yeah. I guess that's the summary of me being like, I have to limit my own intake of these videos because they're so horrifying to me because of the vulnerability that's just being exploited, you know. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, on that note, I feel like that was kind of before the show we started getting to these really

deep conversations. We're just like, oh my heart, you know, believe it or not, atheists do have them, And well, I recognize that my feelings don't come from my heart, that that is in fact a metaphor. I yeah, seeing this sort of injustice is so upsetting. Yeah. On that note, we have a call from Rob who is he him? It looks like identifies as an atheist and wants to talk about numbers five. The abortion ritual says there is a fungus that grows on wheat and would be

present in the temple counters anyone arguing against abortion from the Bible. So hey, Rob, tell us about what's going on in numbers five. I. So, as we all know, one of the key components of the aborting or tool in numbers five is to take dirt from the temple floor. The temple is where they brought all their offering meat grain especially, and ergot is

a naturally occurring fungus that grows on cereal crops. And we know that we've actually been using it for literal millennia in obstetrics, and one of the things that can cause is miscarriage. Yeah, also migraine treatments. It was used for a long time in treatment of migraines, but we stopped using it because it causes a slew of other side effects as well, and so it's like not the best thing to use in general. But yeah, it's it's possible

that you know, this was a use for that purpose back then. Interesting and definitely that like an all powerful and all knowing God would prob Sorry good, oh no, no, please, oh, just the idea of an all powerful and all knowing God if he is instructing you to do something that could potentially cause miscarriage, seems this seems odd that he would be so upset by abortions if he's doing something that could potentially cause a spontaneous abortion. But

what were you going to say? It seems odd? It seems that it seems as though intentionality, like we know that it exists to use it in medicine. There's no way God wouldn't know that. Yeah, you would think, yeah. I mean with that particular topic, I have some questions about, like because I know, I know there are intentional abortions mentioned in the

Bible. There is intentional commands to terminate pregnancy in the Bible. I wonder with that specific wording from that verse, I wonder how much of that was like intentionally going for miscarriage. Because I know with the temple, the dirt on the temple floor, while it could contain urge like poisoning it, I don't know if that particular versus hinting that it's intentionally being used for that, or that it's intentionally like known that that substance would be in the soil that

they would be eating. But I do think that there there are definitely other examples where they do mention. For example, there's a compound at one point that is likely copper containing and use like for the purpose of terminating pregnancy, especially preventing like implantation of a fetus. So yeah, there's definitely definitely examples. It's so interesting how many of the natural elements that exist on the planet can cause things, can cause our bodies to miscare and to cause us to

have negative reactions for completely odd, mundane reasons. We use copper all the time, you can cook with it, but if you have it inside your body, it can cause problems. It's very interesting that the natural world seems to align with the ideas for all these various things, but like, actually a lot of it's really hostile to our ongoing likelihood. Yeah, pregnancy, pregnancies in general are very difficult to maintain, They're very difficult to have go

well. People that think that pregnancy is just an easy, straightforward process are very like misunderstanding of everything that happens. Miscarriage is incredibly common, and there's a lot of times you might miscarrying and not even know because you could have a like a zygode or a gestation that is like barely past stages of conception and then not implant and then that would be a miscarriage that you just don't

even know about. There's plenty of different places where pregnancy can go wrong, and people tend to focus primarily on where it goes well, which nowadays, most of the time it does go well. We've we've come to a place where understanding is good enough to know how we can adjust things with physiology in order to make it go well more often. But it didn't used to be that way, and especially in the Bible, there likely were a lot more

miscarriages and a lot more people that didn't survive childbirth. And it's a very difficult process to have go well. And yeah, the world that we live in, everything is not it's not well designed for anything to physiologically go well. A lot of it's just it accidentally just seems to work in a certain way. But yeah, I would I would agree with you that things are

not statistically favorable in a lot of senses. And I mean that just kind of goes into evolution, like how we get recurrences of things that are more likely to be favorable, and I think we're all in this room. I think we're all in agreement on that. As a person who is currently almost exactly seven months pregnant, I feel like it's been interesting for me. This is my second pregnancy that it has gone fairly well. I'm extremely fortunate,

and so I look at my like healthy pregnancy. I still ended up being anemic. I still have, you know, blood pressure that's low enough to need to be monitored. I still was nauseous for months and months on end, which is a good sign. I guess that you know, if you're nauseous, you're less likely to miscarry. But it's a miserable good sign, gotta say, particularly if you already you don't have a child or trying to

do anything with your life at all, including get out of bed. I think about the fact that my nerves in my back are almost just crippled in pain every day by the end of the day, like I can't really move very well because it hurts so badly, and it's just the weight of the baby pressing down, is what I've sort of been told. I honestly feel like doctor would probably understand some of what's happening here better than I do.

But my pregnancies are great. Nothing that happens in them risks my life or the life of the child that I'm just dating, and I'm grateful for that. But even with that, it's still miserable. Even with that, it still takes this incredibly high toll on my health as a whole. My hips are two inches wider than they were before my first child, which means that in that sixteen hours of labor, in two and a half hours of pushing, I somehow expanded my bones. That's a bizarre thing to have happened to

you, and a bizarre thing to say. But when we talk about this, this is like best case scenario. You know, I was able to give birth in a way that was relatively you know, pretty much uncomplicated. You know, nothing was going to be pretty crazy, too drastic or wrong, And this is still what happened. These are still some of the epic things that occurred within my body, let alone any kind of like mental health consequence for not being able to get out of bed without puking for months and

how that can be really stressful. Were just the fact that there's so many different hormones going on that you end up having sometimes very odd reactions to situations in your life. Pregnancy is hard when it's great, and so the idea that were designed in any way for this to go well is totally bizarre to me. Oh absolutely, My wife and I had a really good pregnancy, and I say ay, as though I had much to do with it, it went really well. And even all of that, it still changes your

body. It physically is taxing. It is a dangerous endeavor. Even some cultures in history have recognized that the Spartans you only got a grapestone if you died in battle, or if you were a woman who died giving birth because you were sustaining the empire. And it's like even different cultures recognized these things were incredible and it might be sexist to turn it to men fight on the battlefield, women's fight in the birthing, but I didn't take it that way.

Thank you get randomly, Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting too. You know, I live in Texas, so of course me being pregnant is something that I have to have a discussion every time about what we will do if something happens that cannot be medically dealt with here in Texas, and I

am thank you. I realized that we are in such a fortunate situation in my little family that if we did need determinate the pregnancy for whatever reason, I could leave, but I would have to come back to the state and not tell anyone what I had done, because I would be a felon if I did that, and I could be arrested. It's just a very thin, a very strange thing to think about when I'm like, and this is like a fully wanted pregnancy, and it I still could be punished if it

goes wrong, and that's absolutelytly bizarre to me. I know, they don't much to say other than about that. Yeah, And like I said, I'm fortunate. I I feel like that's really it's I can't even comment on other women's situations who have been experiencing miscarriages and might actually end up being prosecuted for a miscarriage, which for some reason, pro life is like to pretend could never happen, and yet absolutely has. You know, I think they

don't. I think they don't examine examine the end result of their beliefs, like if you want enforced by law, then you need an mechanism by which to investigate it, because we're not just going to go back to which trials and accusations. We hopefully we don't, but I know you're like, we're not. And I'm like, yeah, oh, that that one, Oh that one, that one, that one might be. The one faced thing I believe in is like I think there's enough people here who think and use

their brains. I really don't know that there are, but I sure hope there are, because even if we do the things that they want, it's like, okay, how you have to design a system? Now, you don't just get to go I want a thing. Tell me how you're going to make it happen, and I can tell you whether or not that's probably

a good thing or not. But if you don't even know how and that thing sounds unreasonable, then I don't Then I don't even want to try and engage with the concept at all, Like that doesn't sound like a good idea to do, Like you can't even tell me how to make it happen. That would make it seem okay. Yeah. The problem is they start pulling the trigger on things and they happen, and they don't even They don't they don't understand who are the victims of the consequences of these things. They don't

care enough to look into it more. And it's unfortunate because, like, there are plenty of reasons why you would need an emergency termination or even a non emergency termination, if there are conditions that leave you at such high risk for complications, Like if you ask anybody, like if you had even let's take even a small risk like ten percent, Like if you had a ten percent risk that you could absolutely just die in your pregnancy and there'd be nothing

that we could do to help you. Would you take that risk for yourself? But more importantly, would you want somebody else to make that decision for you? Like, when you understand what is at stake here, it's hard to say that you would oppose rights for other people because, yeah, I might be willing to take a ten percent, but somebody else might absolutely not

be willing to take that ten percent. And if that ten percent, like, for example, one of the big scenarios that seems to be complicated people with connective tissue diseases such as our fans Elers, Dan Lows, et cetera. If you have a condition where too much pressure on your aorta can cause it to explode. Like literally you can get a dissection of your aorta that

can you very very quickly. If you have a connective tissue disease where your blood vessels cannot hold up to that kind of pressure, you have a significantly high risk of that happening during a pregnancy, and just buy the amount of blood flow that you have to accumulate to compensate for the space that has to get blood flow, like within the baby, but also the pressure from the

baby itself and it growing and taking up that space. If you had that option of like, you have this amount of chance, and I think it's small. I think it's around the ten percent range, but I could be wrong. Like, if you have that that risk, would you want somebody else making that decision for you? Like, Okay, you can either terminate this pregnancy or you can have this risk that your orda is going to explode and there's nothing we can do to help you. That's a choice you have

to make. And going to work with a ten percent mortality rate, you guys, your job, No, I don't. There's a ten percent chance I die. I'm not doing it. Yeah, well, and I think too about factoring in that when you have previous children. You know, like I'm the second of four kids between my parents, and I have a toddler

already. So if somebody told me that now, I think I wouldn't choose to go for the ten percent anyway personally, but I absolutely would say no because there is an extant child here that I could assist and that like needs me as I already am so the idea that like, not only people making that choice for you, but they're making that choice for your whole family. This whole system is going to be impacted by whatever happens to you, And

that is just incredibly heartbreaking to think that somebody would choose that. And you're not only making that choice for those people who get to say whether or not they get a choice, you're also making a choice for the doctors that would have to intervene in those ways. Like if you make it a felony to perform an emergency termination, then you're going to have peer people that are willing to do it, and you're putting them on the line for if they do

it, but then effectively for the people who need those options. Available. Let's say somebody takes that chance, that ten percent chance for themselves and they can't get help. Like, if it comes to be that they need those procedures, you're now increasing their chances of harm because now you're limiting their ability to be helped in those cases. So it's eliminating really every safeguard that we

have in this process for lots of people. And people don't understand, like they think it's a black and white issue of either you get an abortion or you don't, like either your baby dies or they don't, and that's not the discussion. There's so much more layers of nuance here, and the fact that we don't have people who understand weighing in on these issues is incredibly problematic.

It's like if I if I were to weigh in and decide I'm going to make decisions for everybody else about their finances, and like I want to start regulating banks, Like nobody wants that. I can promise you nobody wants that because I will just ignore it and I don't know anything about the economy, So like, why would I be the right choice for this. I

wouldn't. But I understand that a lot of people unfortunately don't understand that medicine is similar that, like you can't just pretend to know it and then get away with it and then and then say, oh, well this thing got messed up, but it's their fault. And also I wasn't trained, so how do you expect me to know? So, like, if you weren't trained and we can't expect you to know, then why are you stepping into

this position of leadership and making the decisions like I just told them? Because because in Ohio, I really get that, particularly as as someone who cares about other people and literally cares for other people. Trying to dictate what part of that job is against my better knowledge or in this case a doctor's better knowledge is almost like enforced apathy. Imagine seeing someone who needs help, who absolutely needs it, and being told helping that person is a crime none of

us. Wow that Like, it's it's what it's the it's the rambifications of what they want, but they don't seem to like conceptualize it. And it's so wild to me for people to either not have an imagination or just no forethought, Like the thing you want will have to have rules, So the rules are gonna be the problems that we encounter along the way. You know, it isn't just one thing, it's theme you want and that system looks

bad, and they don't seem to really. They're just like, well, but I like the thing, and it's like, but you could do that just for you. You don't have to get one tell me what I can

do. That's it's this interesting thing where they want their own freedom, but they also want the freedom to tell you what to do, despite that being the opposite a pres I mean this idea that if you feel God has told you that you have the answer, and it doesn't matter what you know, what the practicality is of it, It doesn't matter what medical professionals say, it doesn't matter the fact that you're going to be requiring people who are caregivers

to not actually help those in dire need, because this is what This is what God said, and it doesn't matter that we can we can track exactly when God started saying that, apparently historically, and that it was absolutely a political movement and came from political ideologies, and the issue of abortion has been

used to manipulate voters for you know, almost generations. At this point, None of that matters because to this you know, imaginary legislator or voter, it's just this idea of well, God said it, So anything we're saying

becomes irrelevant in light of that, which I find so deeply disturbing. And I think even when I was a Christian, I I'm not confusing that God is okay with suffering, I guess in this way, and God is okay with us inflicting it because this one issue that we've all decided matters more than any other is on the table. It's divinely mandated cruelty at that point.

It's what it feels like. I grew up raised cats like my mother's Catholic, and I never I never got even really past like the first communion stage of belief in God. Because one of the first things in Catholicism for people who don't know, is do your first union. It's like second grade. You get all dressed up. There's a big thing. It's like a little tiny kit king Sanira, a lot of fun. It's nice. You get your family together, you get food, you get to dress up, you

get a picture taken. But one of the things is you have to go to the priest and you have to confess your sins. And I'm eight at this point, and I'm like, I don't know what, like what sins, Like I've done bad things, but I've also expres rest, remorse and tried to atone I don't feel the need to tell that to this guy. I feel like God would understand, Yeah, don't punch your little brother,

but he was annoying me. Don't do it anyway, and like, Okay, you're right, God, I probably shouldn't punch him, but you know, you know, I'm a little kid. Like it's this weird idea to me that God is both a loving, caring father who will then over punish you. Like but but that's bad. Like like guys, like if like if we put all of God's qualities into a person and then let that person do things, that person's going right to jail. They're going to the Hague

right Like It's like, I'm going to set you up. I'm going to set you up to fail. I'm going to absolutely set you up to fail, and then when you fail, I'm going to say it's your fault and I'm going to punish you for eternity. Like that's that's what happened. That's

yeah, incredibly abusive. He's so evil, it seems. Yeah, And when you when you think about if you grow up in a family that talks a lot about sin, then it's almost like, well, that's, of course what the heavenly Father would do, that's what your parent, that's what

your earthly parents are doing. If you're talking about sin all the time and there's this assumption that a seven year old can be possessed by a mermaid demon or that you can commit sin before you understand the idea of even right or wrong, then you're sort of being set up to fail by your parents here.

You know, you're getting punished for sinning when you're a small child, as Georgia Purdham of Answers and Genesis referred to her like four year old as a dirty sinner, which for some reason made me laugh just because she included the word dirty. I'm like, you could have just said she's a sinner anyway. But it's like, so, of course the heavenly Father. That makes sense because that's what's happening inside of your home too, right, which

is also heart wrenching. Yeah, on that super depressing note, we have another caller. I really want to get to. But I have so appreciated talking with you. Rob. You are delightful and I appreciate your perspective. Thank you so much, Lpia, Thank you much, Doctor Been, Like, I didn't even know that the order, the a order thing was a like thing that people have. That's fucking terrifying. I don't know how women don't kick people who are anti joy It's because I can't get my leg that

high right now, so I can't kick anybody. Thank you guys so much for the call, and I can't wait to hop in and listen to everything. Thank you so much. Bye, What a delightful person. I just appreciate your perspective so much, Doctor Ben too, because I'm like, I can tell you what I'm going through, I can't tell you how it's working.

Yeah, So I find that really interesting. I think it's a great it's a great dynamic that you and I have because I can't I've never been pregnant, so I can't give that insight about what it's like to go through a lot of these things. So I think it's a it's a great pairing. We've got here and oh thank you. Oh no, I was gonna

say we have another super chat that I wanted to read real quick. This is from x million and they give twenty dollars saying God's obsession with the YouTube censored act which can lead to procreation because it imbues women with an inordinate amount of power and responsibility over the fact over the act of procreation, which strikes fear and insecurity in his heart, which is very interesting and related statement to

what we've been talking about. Absolutely and just the idea that women could have control of this or could choose that you know what this does not a dude I want to approcreate with is Yeah, I could see that being extremely threatening

to a lot of folks understanding of religion slash God. It's interesting too that I look at it and the number of women I see blamed for the actions of their child's father in hindsight, like, oh, well, you shouldn't have ever had children with this man, sort of that's on you that he's behaving this way. Like that's a really common narrative, both in and outside

of the church. This kind of sexism is not confined to it, and so it's interesting to think that like giving women control to not procreate with a particular individual, is that we can't do that, but we can blame them for having children with the same individual, and that seems pretty perverse to me. It's a trap, man. There's nothing you can do that will satisfy these folks, which dang. Rough. Yeah, I feel like we're all very in today's very serious day. I feel like we're really hitting a lot

of serious things, which I appreciate. But it's interesting to be like, dang, it's heavy. On that note, we have another caller, David, who goes by He him from Washington State, and he wants to talk about the impracticality of bathroom bands. So hey, David tell us about the impracticality of bathroom bands. Well, I thank you so much for bringing me

into the show. By the way, I'm grateful for this. Uh. I just wanted to say that the bands that are being passed in a lot of state legislators are very impractical and that the face, how would you The only way you could is if you had a cop whose job was to sit in front of every bathroom door in America and look at the lack of thing and delegate genitals of everybody going in. I wouldn't want to be that cop. I don't imagine either of you would want to be and I can't think

of anybody who would, h how would you form? The only thing that these are schools, and that's the only thing that it could be used for. It reminds me of asatomy laws which were used or for asked a men, uh and uh, yeah, So that's kind of what I want to do. There's no practical way of at applying it in any like universal or

fit way. Yeah. The whole bathroom band thing is it's a frustrating topic and also kind of a funny topic at the same time, because you're hitting it right on the mark in that like, there is no good way to enforce this, even if people thought that this is a necessary thing to do, and you're right, really the only way to do it would be to inspect everybody's genitals as they go into the bathroom, which is making it much worse for the people that you're trying to protect, because if the goal is

to prevent people from acting like that around women, you're now forcing everybody to have that done to them. So it really contradicts the things that people are saying they support with these bathroom bands. And you're right, there's nothing practical about it. There's no way that this can end well for anybody. And the way that I handle a lot of these discussions, at the end of the day, you have to at some point be willing to accept self id

like. At some point you're going to have to get there because there's too many variables involved with what categorizes you in one category or another. Where at what point do you draw the line between male and female? Like? Where do you put that? Because like, does it stop at like genital inspections, does it stop at chromosome testing? Does it stop at like? I

don't know. There are so many variables and no matter how you define this, at some point you're going to have to accept that not all of those variables are going to line up. And so the concept even of a person who is a woman and who is a man like, no matter how you try to quantify that or qualify that based on physical attributes, you can't do it. You cannot do it purely on that. You have to allow for some level of self id Yeah, I think sorr phaps, but their physical

presentation is male and vice versa. And you also have for persons who have an extra chromosome such as inclined filter syndrome and in other conditions where they may be x y y or x y x. So how do we fly those folks? You know? And what do you do about intersex persons? You know, realistically things are not merely as cut and dry as people want to make it out to be. And I just see these laws as not really being about bathrooms, not really being about women at all, or about protecting

women. It's really just a crude attempt at harassment, trying to make lafin even more difficult for a population that the person sponsoring these laws don't like. And it's really nothing more than using the legal system as a weapon. There's yeah, I think, I mean terribly. It doesn't remind me of a James Acaster is a British comedian. He makes a joke about how, you know, we looked around and we're like, you know, who's had it too good for too long? Trans people and so started you know, making

these laws. But I fully agree with you on pretty much every point that it's all so much more complicated. But then bringing it back to just practicality, this isn't even necessarily about being trans. When we think about, like I have a little boy and he comes into the bathroom with me, because I'm not going to have a two year old to go into a public qustroom by himself. Right. Is there an age limit that they're going to include. What if they say by the age of seven they should be going into

bathrooms by themselves? But I still don't feel safe at that with that in particular place where we are. What if at the age of five he looks like he's eight, because not everybody develops age wise on the same scale. So is someone going to stop and police me from taking my son into the bathroom my f all the most comfortable bringing him into where I can monitor what's

going on. Is that not going to be allowed because it's someone they would identify as a boy in a women's restroom and just not to in any way diminish the fact that I am not the most impacted party when it comes to these things. I am a cis woman. But I look at it and I'm like, this impacts every person, even if they're thinking that it doesn't, you know, I think about I grew up in kind of a Washington Eastern Oregon area, so I'm actually kind of from around where you are.

But there were women I knew who were extremely conservative Christian and who were extremely badass and like worked for like the Forest Service and things like that, and their presentation was very you know, could be seen as very masculine looking, and then when these laws started coming up, they were very for them. And I was just kind of pointing out, like, you're going to put yourself in a position where someone's going to start just questioning your gender simply because

you've been out in the woods all day and you didn't do glam. You know that this is going to impact you as well. And that was something that was was a difficult argument for some reason to make simply because they didn't see it that way. It's yeah, these impact everybody. Yeah, And their end goal here, based on the way that they are framing it, is like they don't want trans people in the bathroom period. Like all of these lead to, wherever they take it, they all lead to trans people

are not allowed in any bathroom. But go ahead, I want to hear your thoughts. Sorry, I wanted to detail on something that Sophia had just mentioned when she was talking about her child. This would also impact the parents of children who have autism or have mental parents. You know, there are some persons who physically may be twenty and twenty five years old and yet are not mentally a place where they can function independently, Say a person with downs,

what are you going to do about those folks? Going to scopardize that community and say, okay, you're not allowed to use the restroom either. And the parents of these folks or their caregivers are now in a position where if they're not the same gender of that child, they can't go out in public with them for fear of having to use a public restroom and be caught up in this whole nonsense. It's really just creating nothing more than a clinement

of fear, harassment, division, and hate. And you know, there's a lot of persons out there that want to pretend that trans people haven't existed until recently. But I as somebody who grew up in the Catholic Church, I'm an atheist now antithiist actually, But having grown up Catholic, I remembered the pope Joe was a woman who became pope in the ninth century, believe

it or not. And you know there has been in the historical record if you read back far enough, even the Greeks and the Romans trans people. You know, trans people have always been around, uh and always will be. And these laws aren't going to make trans people go away. Uh. It's really nothing more than hate and division being directed at a community that has already got to do with entirely too much. You think, how you open the news, but for some time I looked at them, I think,

yeah, the audio is cutting out a little bit. Well, yeah, and I'm a I'm a trans guy that unfortunately has to use bathrooms, and like, the the absolute best answer to all of this is having like individual bathrooms with the door that goes all the way down to the floor and the walls that go all the way down the floor, so you can be private in your own space and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what body you

have, because everybody is safe and everybody's like treated equally in that. But yeah, the way these all these laws are working, and we see this for for all varieties of trans people, but oftentimes people are focusing on trans women and whether or not they can use certain bathrooms, and they'll say, trans women, go use the men's bathroom, which you'll see on the media

as well. Uh, people like pictures of a trans woman using a men's bathroom and then them freaking out about that person being in there, like, well, this is the thing that you asked for. But then if something that when you when you discuss with people, they even even the mention of trans men seems to throw the arguments like into interesting places because people forget that we exist at all, and so the arguments don't stand as soon as you

throw a transmand into the mix. Because if we're if the goal is to protect people who are assigned female, and you want all of them to be in their own private space because they don't believe that I'm a man. They believe that I'm a confused woman, and so I should belong in the women's bathroom. But if I were to walk into a women's bathroom, people would be concerned and I get thrown out because I make people uncomfortable because I am seen as a man. So then the alternative is, do am I allowed

to use the men's bathroom? And like some people are okay with that, but others are like, no, that's unsafe if you shouldn't be allowed to go in there, Like okay, where do we go we don't go out in public, and that's that's it. So the whole arguments end up being

contradictory on all fronts. But yeah, it's a garbage argument. It's totally illogical and really just the bath Like, the thing about the bathrooms is there's no need for our bathrooms to exist the way that they currently do, and the fact that we are looking at it is like, oh, we have to have this argument because what bathroom they're going to use? Like this system is so arbitrary, just just get rid of it. And that's that's how I feel about a lot of our systems, just like we don't have to

make this thing that doesn't work keep working. We don't have to like try to revive this thing, just start over, do something better than this, because we can do something better than this. And it's a simple, it's a simple answer, Like it's not hard, and yet people want to make it so hard. Can you think of how much more emotionally and psychologically safe high school in middle school would feel if you just had your own bathroom cubicle.

Like I feel like some of the most intense feeling confrontations I ever had is like a sixth grade girl or in the bathroom. Yeah, I mean just I fully agree single stalls would make life better for everyone. Yep, Hry David were to say something, sure statue, Yeah if somebody who grew up as the shorter stature of your average male. The most terrifying moments of my childhood took place in the school bathroom as well, you know, just for you know, because I couldn't send anybody off. They were like,

you know, a foot taller than me. But honestly, I think even more practical, like even for the folks to sale, we don't want to spend all the money to do bathrooms differently, is why not just mind your own fucking business, right, Like, I don't care the rules you have here in the urimal next to me. If you can do it and you've

got to go, I mean an important a storm, right. I mean I've been in positions where I had to go really bad before and for whatever reason, the mentor wasn't working or they're you know, this full of people or whatever. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Why do we have to have gender bathrooms at all? Like why not just way look whatever,

just pay attention to your own business and don't bother other people. Yeah, and I mean, thinking about the notion, I feel very aware of privileging this conversation for myself, partially because I was just thinking about it. I'm like, I don't know the men's bathroom all the time, and I know no one's ever going to call me on it because I do it because there's no line and I'm not a trans person, so I'll just be like,

yeah, I went in there and whatever. And because the point of the law is so clearly to oppress trans people like I just sort of know it would never apply to me, which is so fucked up. I almost hesitate to say it because it feels weird to acknowledge that, like, yeah, I can just do this thing obviously, but yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't have a great conclusion for that. It's just sucking is horrible, that's all. Yeah. Well, thank you so much

for calling. There is another color we should jump on and get to. But I absolutely appreciate your perspective so much and definitely call in again if you have have some more thoughts to share today. It's been an interesting day in like thematically in my opinion, because it feels like there's this consistent theme of people that religious folks or hardcore conservatives are willing to put on the chopping block for the sake of their agenda, whether it's about trans writes or abortion.

It's like easy to list all of these other folks who will be impacted or all of these awful negative consequences to these bigotries and this legislation, and none of that seems to factor, and none of that seems to matter. And it's just okay to sacrifice people, anybody, so long as they can get

to the to the people they want to hurt, and that's yeah. And there seems to be like and this is something that goes back to kind of our discussion about exorcism, even the idea that there's a lot within religious culture of promoting a well, I'm just glad that's not me. I'm just glad it's not me. That's the dirty ciner or the gay person going through conversion there, or like a person struggling with addiction. People like people look at

other people and they say, at least that's not me. And in order for this mindset to kind of carry forward, you need somebody else to look at to say I'm glad that's not me. And so no matter what time it is, you're going to find a group to think about that with. And right now we've got multiple people on that chopping block. And if there's a point where these people are no longer around, are no longer acceptable,

they'll move on to the next one. The whole kind of premise, even within the Bible, is like making people happy that they're not the other person, Like, not everybody's going to be saved. Be happy you're not those people, and so you're just scrambling to do a good enough job pleasing God so that you're not the person that gets thrown out. And I think that goes into a lot of the panic and a lot of the attempts to be the best Christian or the attempts to like put yourself out there as one of

the good ones so that you don't end up in that other pile. And it's just it's fear on everybody's part, and I think that's something that it's so hard to get out of religion because of that feeling. And so people in religion are victims as well. And that's why I mean shameless plug here

for recovering from religion. I know we haven't had specific talks today relating to that, but that's why we have organizations like r FR for people who have come from those backgrounds of being taught to think, well, I'm at least I'm not this other person, and then where do we go from there?

So a lot of things contribute to this, and hopefully we can get to a place where we don't need to put other people aside, where we don't need to have these arbitrary laws just so that we can feel better about ourselves. I don't think we'll ever get there, but we can maybe take some steps and just reform our bathrooms, I know, maybe just make a little not as horrible for some people. On that note, I want to talk about people that we do really appreciate to make make this possible, make it

possible for us to have these conversations. And those are our top five patrons. Do you want to read the top five patrons for us there? Doctor Ben? Do you want me to go ahead? I don't have them in front of me. I'm sorry, I can go ahead and do it. Sorry about that, all right? So the top five patrons. Number one, we have Dingle Barry Jackson, who is just all these names are so

incredible to me. I love them. Two Oops all Singularity, three devor Valjean, which I feel like is a rite of passage coming on the show to learn how to like pronounce some of the patron names, and that one I've alway struggled with a little bit more number four Kleevi Helvetti and five left in the leaves. And this week we have an honorable mention for Michael Alessi, who is also a patron. So we appreciate the patrons so much.

Thank you to everyone who gives to us on Patreon. If you want to have your name read on the air, then please consider supporting us at tiny dot cc slash patreon th and so that's just the word Patreon with THH for Talk Heathen at the end. And on that note, we have also started recording the Talk Heathen discord after show for all levels of paid patrons. So if you want more content and a more informal, you know, look and discussion with our hosts, then you can get that from Patreon. It's pretty

cool whenever we have like a chat after sometimes it gets really deep. Sometimes it's just more about like who we are as people or just joking around in the after show. So if you want to get to know us kind of a little bit better, then you get that content if you sign up for the for the Patreon. If you're not sick of me by the end of the show, and you'll be like, okay, yeah. So we have another call here that actually relates really well to what you were just talking about,

which is like recovering from religion. And so we have Tony who identifies as a theist and also he him in Virginia, and he's talking about going through deconstruction but has lingering fears and is stopping kind of at the final steps. And so Tony tell us about what you're going through at the moment. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And that was

an excellent introduction. I appreciate that very much. And just to give a little bit of backstory, I grew up in the church, attended church all my life. I went to college to go into ministry. I worked in youth ministry, and in the course of my studies excuse me into I guess the early Christian Church and the way a lot of the tenants of Christian faith

were established and so forth. Also just looking into details of the theology you of who the Christian got is. I used a phrase of the closer I looked, the more I started to see the cracks and things didn't make as much sense to me the more I look, and I found myself in kind of this perplexing position where you know, I not to to my own horn or anything, but I fancy myself, you know, of a certain level of intelligence, and I'm kind of like, you know, God, you

gave me this brain and this ability to question and think logically and nationally and to understand complex concepts and ideas. And the more I utilized that gift giving me the less sense to me, and that ended of itself was very difficult for me. And so that coupled with the fact that I lost a very good friend of mine in cancer got twelve years ago. And while I was when that happened, I was studying to go into the ministry on a Christian

college campus. I was attending church at a Christian church, working as a youth minister at that church, and I was going through the artist period of my life, having lost my best friend and never felt more alone. I didn't have anybody checking up on me. I didn't have anybody saying, you

know, hey, man, you go okay? And like I was missing classes, I was missing engagements with friends, I was missing fraternity events and things like that, and like all the figns are there that I was going through something dark, and I'm like, supposedly all these people are in Dwelt with the same holy spirit that I think that I'm in Gwilt with. Why the heck is nobody checking in on me here? You know? Why? Am I just drifting alone? And that sent me to some dark places.

I don't want to trigger anybody, but you can. You can draw your own conclusions. And that was kind of the beginning and the end for me. So for the last you know, twelve years, I've been going through this period. At first, it was just sort of like living however I want that. I sort of came back to a place of like, I don't really know what I believe and I find a piece of together and I still have these there's I'll call it what it is. It's a desire.

I have a desire to want. I want there to be some meaning and some purpose for life beyond the tangible universe. I want there to be something supernatural. I want there to be some meaning behind this, and I think that may be the linch pin that's keeping me holding on. But there are also these lingering doubts in the back of my mind that you know, if I were to die tomorrow, that you know, I'd be staring Satan or God or some other entity in the face. And you know that these things

that I believe my whole life are actually true. And you know, I'm sure you guys have been there, if you've ever been at this, So that is as a stainct, say, background, as I can give you. And I guess I'm at the point where I either want to just decide that I believe that there is there's some purpose and meaningful life and I'm just looking for that, or that there's nothing and move forward with whatever that means.

And I don't. I don't really feel any overwhelming push in either direct and yeah, just trying to make sense that things ultimately truth is what matters to be fact, So what matters to me. I want to know what is actually accurate and true. I alts want to delude myself into a complacency, you know, I want to first start by being like that is you're joking about as sustinct as you could make it, but it's actually very rich

in detail your story. Also, I want to acknowledge like how difficult it is to go through those things alone, and that I'm sorry that happened that you were just sort of left hanging and people that you were told or your community and you have this in common with that, you know, you have the same Holy Spirit inside of you simply weren't there, because that makes it so much harder to kind of keep enduring through difficult things when you've always been

told you'll be sustained through these difficult things, you'll be given this this energy and you know this community, and then it just disappears when things get hard. That sucks so bad. So just mentioning that. But your your story is I relate to so many aspects of it a lot. One big one is the sphere of hell. Like I've mentioned on the show before that I

had a hard time letting that go. And even if I intellectually knew and even through reading the Bible and like hell is not as we as you know an evangelical church would have ever described it, knowing that wasn't enough because it had been so deeply ingrained into into my faith, my conception of myself had to be a little different because I'm like, where does my morality come from?

I felt like if I let it all go, it would become so chaotic and I wouldn't be able to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. There was always sort of a manuscript, or not manuscript, but like a sequence you would go through that if you don't know what to do, you know, read the Bible, talk to a past or, pray, and it would just sort of come to you. And if I didn't have that to do, then how would I find my own morality? It's scary to lose all of that. It's also scary to tell people in your

life who knew you as a Christian that you don't believe that anymore. That you've moved forward. I think I'm curious. I guess about you mentioned that you're at this point where you want to sort of choose one or the other. Why are you feeling urgency around that choice? And it's hard to sit in this middle where you're not sure yet, but it feels like you feel a push to sort of make something feel final. What's happening there? You

know, I don't know. I haven't really considered that. That's something I think I might chew on for a little bit, but I think to a large extent, it's an aspect of my personality. I don't like making decisions. I don't like making choices, and so I will sit down and I will wrestle with a thing, and I will make my decision, and then unless compelling evidence comes along to convince me to change that decision, to change that decision, I'll stick to it. Like I decided what my style of

dress is going to be twenty five years ago and I haven't changed. Like there's just different colors, but otherwise it's the same shirt, same genes, same you know, Like I have one outfit in multiple colors because I don't want to have to make that decision, you know, And I just want to get to a point where I'm like, Okay, this is what I believe, this is why I believe it, and I don't want to think about it anymore. And it's just sort of it's the way I operate.

It's very annoying to I mean, significant others. I've had in my life. But I don't know. I don't know if there's anything pressing aside from the fact that I I guess maybe I want. I want some peace of mind. I want if there truly is nothing more than what exist in the corporal of the universe, and when we're done, we simply cease to exist, then I want to begin operating in that to maximize the time that I

have here and make the most out of what I have here. And if there's not, if it is the case that there is some purposes, some meaning behind it, like even if it's not within the Christian faith, you know, if it's something other than that, that I want to begin operating

in that and pursuing that to the highest level that I'm capable of. And as I've been deconstructing, I realize that, you know, growing up as a Christian, when I heard other faiths and belief structures and philosophies and so forth, I sort of address them the same way that we kind of address the ancient breaking Roman pantheons of gods. You know, we talk about breaking

Roman mythology and we dismiss it with that word mythology. And I think that that overlooks the fact that for the better part of however, many hundreds of years, you know, much of the known world lived and died under those religions and people, would you know what I learned about Buddhism and Confucianism and Hinduism and Islam and all the other religions out there. I dismissed them with that same like, oh, well, I know what the truth is.

These are just quite little folk beliefs of other people around the world, you know. But I know what the truth is. I know it, I know reality is. And so I stepped back and I said, I've never really addressed these other faiths on their own terms, and I started looking into them more deeply and more genuine And as I've done that, there are certain

ideals and tenants that are almost universal. The Golden Rule, for example, shows up in some way, shape or form, and so many different philosophies from around the world, which I think is, is you know something that's relating to human nature of the fact that we all just want to be treated a certain way. I've come to this idea that what if, what if

the point of religion is to grow beyond the need for it? What if it's it's our training wheels to get us to a point where we no longer require the prominence, paradise or the threat of damnation to be a good person. We simply become good people because it's the right thing to do. And

maybe that's what this is really all about. And you know, that's sort of the limb that I'm on right now, is wondering if if we're not simply meant to grow beyond the need for you know, threat characteristics, if you prefer yeah, yeah, I think people because you know, I don't mean to hijack the shaft, right, I could talk for we're letting you know, it's you're saying interesting things we care about. That's you're not hijacking things. It's fine. And I think I think you're going in the right

direction. And I think I think you're going to be going a similar direction that both of us have have gone on. Just I want to point out something interesting that you're saying with like the idea that what if religion is meant for us to grow beyond it? And I think that's an okay thing to start from based on on where we're at in this conversation. But looking at a lot of the things that religion has done. Unfortunately we start off our

training wheels are incredibly flawed, and our training wheels stick with us. We have a bias that goes forward. We have things that we anchor on, We have things that like our brain has developed kind of around the society that we live in and around the stimuli that we perceive in the way that we

look at the world. And even if there are some things that are positive that religion has done, there's also a lot of garbage that we're taught and if we're letting that be our training wheels, that can be incredibly problematic.

And that's why people have trauma and leaving religion. And so I'm not saying that everything that we learn from that is something that we need to throw away, but I would maybe suggest using some caution in saying that, like religion is something that we have, like that has as a purpose and letting us grow from it. I see the desire of wanting to wanting to have a positive spin on things that we used to believe or positive outlook on things that

happened to us. But I think maybe, and maybe I want to ask you this question of why do you feel like you need to hold on to these pieces. I get it's hard to let things go, but I think really what's going to help us go in a direction is kind of unpacking what's keeping you in this space. Well, I do want to respond to something

that you said they were playing and move on the go for it. You know that the religion has done terrible things, and so often on the show, I hear your hosts talk about the importance of defining terms, and maybe I should have done that initially. I would define religion as the belief structures in one of themselves, and not necessarily the deeds and actions those belief structures

and so forth. Not to say that there aren't negative aspects of the belief structures, but essensibly, in a very broad sense, I think religion as the thing which seeks to tell us how to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. They don't all get it right. That is O sensibly sort of what the rail on deetra is, so to speak. So that's I appreciate the correction on that. That's uh, that's helpful, but uh, the I guess the thing that's keeping me holding on is a desire

to make the right choice. I don't want to go out on the limb and know I'm one hundred percent certain it's not going to break and fall out under me. And if you know the consequences of going out on the wrong limb means spending eternity the wrong place or you know, not making the most of my life. I mean, you know, the stakes couldn't be hired, you know, but are you are you going to be one hundred percent sure either way? Can you achieve that? Uh? I know that's our

question. It's our question, But like I get the paralysis of wanting to make the right desion and not being able to move because you're not sure where to go. But like, and that's that's the unfortunate thing here, is that at some point you're going to have to accept something that you're not one hundred percent certain about and you don't have to be like, that's not the

expectation. Like it's going to come down to what am I like more certain of And even in that, like you don't have to necessarily jump to something else to have a sense of this thing that I'm currently in is not it. And I think that's where a lot of us end up starting, and a lot of us are still there, like we don't necessarily know what the right thing is. A lot of us would call ourselves agnostic atheists to say, I don't know for certain any of these things, but I'm pretty comfortable

in saying it's not Christianity. I'm pretty confident in saying it's not Islam, it's not these other things. I don't know what it is exactly. I have some ideas about what is real in this in this universe, but like, I'm not as worried about like what is the thing I jump to? But at least I can narrow down my answer choices and say, well, this one's not a right answer. And so maybe that's comforting in a way of like it's scary to not have certainty. But more of us are in

that space of like I'm not really certain of anything. I'm just more comfortable at saying this is less likely to be true. And That's where I'm at, And I'm curious to hear both of your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think I want to address a couple of things, and then I don't want to cut you off, but I do want to get to like our kind of one last caller, and we're reaching the end of the show.

But I'm first I would want to say that the discussion over what religion is or isn't is interesting and difficult, and also happens in atheist spaces because not all atheists feel the same way about the faith that they left. Not an atheist ever had a faith, So there's quite a bit of diversity of what we think. And you can still feel like you these good things from faith and religion and now you don't believe it, but still acknowledge those things.

I personally have a hard time kind of finding this finding a middle there. I think that there were some I don't know who I would be if I wasn't without it, But that's simply because or if I didn't grow up with religion. But that's simply because I can't know. I don't know if it was better for me or worse for me. I can tell you ways in which both could be argued, but I think for me, like I eventually sort of asked myself, what what do I what evidence would convince me of

a god? And what evidence do I need to believe the Bible specifically, And I needed more confirmation of the text personally, I needed to figure it, like is this reliable? Who actually wrote it? How do we know? How is this decided? And the more I got into that, the more I was like, all right, that was the evidence I would need, and it was coming up incredibly short in ways that I had never known before. So I'm curious as to what it is. What evidence are you

looking for? You know, because you're looking for an answer, but what

could that answer look like for you? I feel like we've asked you a lot of really big questions too, and I think we do even yeah, and even of course, like I want us to kind of get through these points, but I would love for you to also call back other times because I feel like we have an infinite amount of things we can discuss with you, and you've You've been a very polite and genuine caller and I so even if there's things we don't get to today, I still want to have these

conversations. I would love for us to keep to keep discussing. Yeah, I think we've given you a lot of big questions that we ask ourselves too, and unfortunately get we got to get going. So I'm going to drop you, but thank you so much for calling and please please call back because I want to know, give you some time to think about this and then come call back and let us know what you think. So I'm super curious

about that. So I am thank thank you for the time and for the thoughtful questions and just to fight this to summarize everything, I think whatever is going to uh make me the best version of myself, there is going to be the answer that I'm I'm ultimately looking for, soay, whatever that may

be, I don't know, but that's ultimately what I'm striving towards. And I've certainly taken a lot out of my faith in the past, but I've also become a much better version of myself moving away from my faith because you know, uh yeah, my Christian faith, you know, to put me against LGBT issues and things like that. And I have since come around and being like, no, like people are people and you know, love and love and everything else. Yeah, yeah, so there's some and you know,

in all areas of human experience. But thank you again. I don't want to keep any further and I call back definitely what interesting polite people we've had today. I feel very privileged to have had the callers. We do to be honest, I do want to I have been remiss in making announcements because I've been really focused on the callers. So it yeah, I supposed to do this after the first call and I have not been doing that. And I want to hit on one one super chat before we get into that.

Another one from David Tech, who gave ten Canadian saying that bathroom should be divided between standing and sitting, which it's an option, this option as well. Thank you for another super chat, David. It's also a joke in The Simpsons that most of his lack makes about like he's labeled his bathroom stand ups and sit downs. But so I'm like, you know, maybe Mo was onto something. Yeah, So our announcements, it's time for our

annual back Cruise fundraiser. It is coming up in August. Join us on August twenty fourth with Forrest Valcai j, Mike's Secularity, and many other familiar faces that you've probably seen on this channel. They'll all be in attendance. Get more information and buy your tickets at tiny dot cc slash bat Cruise. The bat Cruise is super fun. You should totally go there's a lot of cool people who are super nice and it's fun to get to you know,

meet your hosts and hang out. So big one first, back, cruise second, become a channel member. Click the join button below this video and you'll get custom chat emotes, early access to clips and shorts, and you will help perpetuate the mission of Talk Heathen and the atheist community of Austin. So that we would so appreciate that. Yeah, join the channel. So one back, cruise two, join, become channel member. Three, Send

a super chat. We read super chats on the air as many as we can send a super chat with a comment or a question, and as you kind of can tell, like, some of them are just real simple. Others are sort of teasing and fun and you know, hey, get your opinion it on the air for a few books, or make a joke or whatever you want. But we definitely love to read them. Press like on the video and subscribe to the channel to enable notifications. Comment below, like

on your favorite color. Who did you love to hear from today? I would also say that today we've had a lot of discussion of things that impact a lot of different people, and I personally don't have all the answers, so comment like things you think maybe that we missed or something that you're like, you know, actually, maybe a better way to go about that or to say that is this, Like, I'm open to that discussion and would really love to know what you all think, because I feel like we have

really cool smart viewers, and I mean half the comments are just being like you're gonna go to hell, but other than that, you know, yeah, let me let me know your thoughts. We also have merch, so yeah, cool talk keithen aca merch. Get yours at tiny dot cc slash merch a c A that's n E r c h A c A. You can get t shirts, mugs, hats you can see they're on the screen. There's some cool like phone cases. You can get a workout tank top.

It feel really epic and the badass talk heathen letters, lift and weights or something. I mean for those who work out. I personally haven't really so much dabbled in that culture. But if that's you, then great. So first, join the back crew, Second, become a channel member. Third, send a super chat, fourth, like and subscribe, write comments on this video. We want to know what you think. And lastly, we have merch so you can wrap hak Heathen wherever you are. So,

yes, all the announcements their super chat. Speaking of super chats, Jamie Gallier sends nine ninety nine and says great show with three hearts. Thank you, Jamie. And that's another example of how you can send a super chat

and be heard on the air. Yeah, you could just compliment us too, that's cool, Like we're not gonna I'm not going to say her to that if you just want to be like you guys are super realiant and amazing and should run the world and like great, thank you, except for doctor Ben won't run banks, as we've established that will be the no banks, no banks for doctor Ben. Yeah. So we have this sort of one

last call that I am definitely curious to hear from. So we have Niica she Her who is an atheist in New York and asks could trans allies use the quote unquote incorrect bathroom to de gender all bathroom spaces. So that's an interesting idea. Tell us what you're thinking there, Nica, Hi, Hi, doctor Ben, Hi, Sophia, thank you so much for thank you much. I know at the end of the show, so I'll try to

make it quick. What if maybe just for Pride not or just forever, just to normalize people to use whatever bathroom they feel like it at the time,

So I would use an assist female. I would use male bathrooms of course if and when it's if and when it's safe, but kind of to just normalize people being in different bathrooms so that it just confuses the biggest Yeah, I think that, like, if people are comfortable doing something like that, I think peaceful ways of inspiring social change is an okay thing to do, like just keep it safe, keep it respectful. But I think that

that's a great thing if people feel so inclined to do that. And my opinion is to defer to doctor Benn and those who are more affected by than I am on this particular issue, and if it's felt that that is helpful and then awesome, and yeah, that's kind of my take is if that's helpful and folks who know more than I do about this are like, yeah, go for it, then then that's my take. That's awesome. Okay, maybe we need to start a campaign for people, especially for Pride months,

to just use whatever bathroom that would upset people. The most upsetting bathroom the Satanist bathroom around the corner. That's going to be the Sorry. Yeah, I mean I'm all in favor of things like malicious compliance and if there are certain rules that pop up and it's like, well, you can't do this because insert arbitrary reason here. You know, I'm all in favor of just you know, following the rule to such an extreme that it defeats their

argument. Like, I think those things are great. I think those things are great. It shows people where their arguments fall, usually depending on the situation. A lot of times those things are really inconsequential things for us, like using the wrong bathroom, et cetera. Like it's such a small thing, but people get very worked up about it. So I think, if that's something that people feel comfortable doing, go for it. Try it,

see see how it works for you. I'd be curious to kind of see, like from a social experiment perspective, like how people would react to something like that, kind of what what things would would come from it. Go for it. Yeah, I think also as a swoman myself, our bathroom lines are extremely long, so it would be very easier to be like, I'm gonna use that one because there's no line. Yeah, well cool, Well, thank you for calling. You know, that was like a little

bit of a short one, but thanks for calling. NKA. Yeah, thank you so much. Guys, have a great after show, ye you to thank you great Sunday. I'm such a dorg. I just said you too for have a great after show, which is not Hey, join us on that after show with us. Yeah, yes, you too can have a good after show as well. Also you'll be having some Yeah. So that is going to be our last call for today. So remember that the

prompt for this week is what is Jesus really saving us from? Reply in the comments below this video and tune in at the beginning of next week's episode to hear the top three answers. We want to thank Richard Gulliver for helping us out. Jilliver, Jiliver, I'm sorry. I'm gonna move a boss. I know. Good thing I don't get paid for this. True is backup hosting today? Yeah, what did you think of the show? What

was your take? Favorite career, great conversations, great to see you and Ben holsting together for the first time, a great fantastic chemistry there by the way, really on fire, and great conversation all around. I particularly enjoyed that. I think it was Tony's call about, you know, the kind

of way he was thinking. I'm always bewildered. I do a little bit of stuff with theology and kind of looking at the early Christian Church and stuff, and I'm always bewildered because I don't know what it's like in the US, but in Britain, the Church of England kind of vicars and priests and stuff have to go through university and they learn about this stuff. They learn about the early Church, they learn about how the theology was formed, they

learned about the economical councils and all of that stuff. And I always find it bewildering how you can go through that process and still remain religious, because it's so obvious when you look at that stuff and how it kind of built on things, and so little bits from kind of Platonism and little bits from the Old Testament and marriage them together, and there were so many different theological concepts, and you know, they literally got together and hashed it out,

which were the right concepts in which we're going to be seen as orthodox and who was going to be kicked out of the church hall in non orthodox views, and it bewilders me that there's all that there in plain sight, that these people actually have to study it and they still come out of it believing. I find that fascinating, fascinating. It's kind of cognitive dissonance. Is it's kind of you know, at the point of there being no more cognitive

dissonance available, because it's that kind of bewildering to me. But it's great when I love calls like that and you know, his ideas about you know, the church and how you know people came to have these ideas about the church and now it was a tool for understanding the world around them, all great stuff. I really enjoyed that call. Yeah, I appreciate just that honesty that it felt like was in that call of just like, ah,

what do we do now? And I think so many us can relate to that, and I would assume so many viewers can too, Like people who are watching this are probably like I've been through that or maybe going through that, and so I always appreciate that. But when someone's honestly looking for the truth and is starting to realize that some of this, some of these inputs don't make sense with the out what they've been given. Yeah, I thought that one was really interesting as well. Yeah, well we are here at

the end. I do want to mention one thing really quickly. I think today was very heavy in a way that I actually really appreciated. But I want to point out how much love there was with so many of these discussions. That there's a lot of bad shit happening that is discriminatory and awful and leading to terrible consequences for people, But we also had collars today being like, how do how do I help? How do I deal with that? How do I explore this? And I think it's such a gift to be

able to be part of that common conversation on here. It's a gift to have callers who really want to do the best they can for others and who are able to see through some of what is being fed to them about you know, Hey, this this is what this is what this crusade is really about. And they're like, I don't I don't think so. I don't think you're just being a jerk. But I see a lot of love there and a lot of care, and that gives me a sense of hope and

gratefulness that I can be part of this conversation as well. Absolutely so. On that note, you can join us the aftershow tiny dot c c slash ac a c D discord. If you don't believe, we do want you to know that this is your community and we appreciate you being here. If you do believe, we don't hate you. We're just not convinced. Yeah, we want the truth, So watch Truth Wanted live Friday at seven pm

Central. Visit tiny dot cc slash y t tw and call into the show at five one two four two, or connect to the show online at tiny dot cc slash call tw