Symbolism is a funny thing, isn't it, Finding inference and meaning in the things that we see and on a nerd, I love it. I love finding all those little references
in the things that I watch in the media I consume. Now, as you may know, at the Summer Olympic Games this year, part of the opening ceremony was a tableau a feast or meal depicting people of many different creeds and colors, centered around I believe a drag queen or transgendered person Haload, and in the foreground a near naked man in blue
wreathed only in a few bunches of grapes. Christians immediately jumped on this, staying that it was blasphemous and that they were draping the satanic and the degenerate on the classic imagery of da Vinci's depiction of the Last Supper. Now, we have to be careful when we interpret things that our biases do not overly color our interpretations. And later it was clarified by the organizers that it was actually a reference to a Genderbila painting called Feast of the Gods,
depicting the Roman god backer Sorr. If you prefer the original Greek Dionysus, god of wine, merriment, and madness. And I don't know how about you, but I don't remember a half naked blue bloke photo bombing that picture of the most auspicious of evening meals, depicting people that probably looked the way that they did, doing something that we can't prove actually happened. So to me, this is just another example of the reactionary persecution complex of Christian fundamentalists.
It highlights their need to have these sacred things that cannot be countenanced, and the hypocrisy of calling atheist degenerate and drag queens satan while claiming offence themselves. And so what if it was the Last Supper drag Race edition, Why should we hold these things so sacred? Why can't we make fun? It may not have happened at all, It certainly didn't look that way if it did, So why can't we have a little bit of a jape?
Is God so emotionally sensitive? So if you can think of any reason why we can't poke a little fun at any piece of artwork, religious or otherwise. And I encourage you to call the show because it's starting now. Hello, and Welcome to Talk Heathen. It is a balmy Sunday, the fourth of August, and I am coming to you from my little hovel and I'm joined to you today by Helen Green. Hello, Helen, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Jamie. I'm really excited to be here. I'm all like, I'm all about it, so I'm really excited. I hope the show today is going to be really interesting, and I hope we get some really cool calls and have some really great conversations.
Indeed, I believe we actually already have a couple a call or two in the in the que already, but there's a few things we have to go through first. As ever, talk He is a product of the Atheist Community of Austin, a five OZHO one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to atheism, secular humanism, and rational thinking in
the separation of religion and government. And if you want to get involved, like these people who are currently patiently waiting online are you can either call us Old School at the number five one two nine nine one nine two four to two, or if you're a bit new or new fangled, do go to the website tiny dot c C Forard slash call t H so fantastic. I'm really excited to get started with We've got a couple
of things to get sorted first. And first of all, I would like to enlist your help in going over our talk even to me segment last week we post posted or posed picky poison. Post you a question, why is God so angry? And if you do the honors in reading our top three answers.
Yes, So the wrong answer is only there we got number three from and if I mispronounced your name, I am very sorry, Sarah Lee. Why yahweh is so angry because the Paris Olympics was in fact celebrating Dionysius and not making fun of the Last Supper persecuse. Some complexes are hard, yo, they are.
I promise you. I came up with the Cold Open before I saw these. It's just it's so obvious.
It's a theme now. Number two comes from Scott M. Gods Ay because he only gets sloppy seconds. Only those who let Jesus enter them reach the Father.
Yeah, I've seen. I won't I won't repeat the sign because of the inferences were I'm not more than ten minutes into it. I don't want even bod Dey monetized. But there are certain phrasings that are used around Jesus that could be construed the I know a.
Dirty joke that I can say, But again I don't know. I don't want to get in trouble in the first ten minutes.
Perhaps the after show. For sure, I have had a top one.
And one comes from Steve row God is ariy because Satan gets more tale which is true.
Yeah.
So also Satan really doesn't have that much of a rap sheet personally, like he seems to just be a guy doing his job.
But anyway, so we have a problem for next week. So for you all your wonderful people that love to engage in our comics section, please give us your answers to next week prompt, which is what is a sub of clue that you picked the wrong religion? Again, the best top three answers will be read out and next week's show. So Jamie, let me pose that question to you. What makes you think you pick the wrong religion?
If I mean the religion I'm in the wrong one because they let me in. How about yourself? You got to answer to that one.
Weird sex stuff, there's always there's always weird sex stuff and now like like you know, like consensual fun sex stuff, stuff that makes you go is this legal?
I'm just a reminder do put those in the comments down below, not in the live chat, because we won't see them. If they're in the live chat, they will not come excellent. And just a couple more things to go. If you want to get involved with the show live as well, you can feel free to bomb us with super chats and as long as they are appropriate for air, we will read them out. We have very little in the way of shame, so as long as it's tos,
you can make us say basically anything. And lastly, before we get on with the rest of the show, I'd like to see a little bit behind the curtain because we're not the only ones here. We have a wonderful crew who make us look good. And there they are, aren't they fantastic?
Ye?
Crew?
You love our crew and not I mean, we do it every week, but they really do deserve to be praised because for one person in front of a camera, there's five behind it. And for every five people in the production crew, there's another five behind them doing things like moderation and email checking and all kinds of really important stuff and nobody really gets paid for this. We're all volunteers, So thank you very much. Crew. We appreciate you for sure.
Okay, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, are you ready to get this show on the road.
Have a call ready. I'm ready to rock. So we have Benjamin him calling in from Alabama. He wants to explain how evil is good. I'm going to bring you on Benjamin here. Okay, Doky, sir, that is a bold ass claim. Please do explain.
Yeah, well, I wanted to go on over one or two times first before I got started. So I called in last week about slavery, and people in the comments was it was pretty funny the comments I got on it. I explained the post of slavery last week. The reason I was calling a good time is to, uh, it's playing how evil is good? And I know that sounds like a double negative, but I was going to try
to explain. So whenever stuff happens to people, whether it's hurricanes or tornadoes, which I have personal experience for tornadoes, but and the other taines that natural disasters or even just everyday events losing her keys, uh, the the outcome of that, it can teach people lessons, it makes people stronger, even crude grief for deaths or there's always a purpose to all of it. Death for example, if it's that person's time to go, then there's that. If you get sick,
it makes your body stronger. So there's a lot of polls to actual what would be considered bad or evil.
Okay, well, so so that's often what's called the theodicy of the greater good, like the things that are apparently evil in fact serve greater good purpose. I have some thoughts on that, but I'd actually like to throw over to my co host Helen first. You have any thoughts on this to get us started, So.
Let me post your question. Do people have to go through, you know, catastrophic events to learn lessons? Like, like, what is the purpose of like people going through like really terrible things so they become a stronger person? Like is there some like can't you do those things without losing your house and a hurricane? Because there is a little bit of a problem with that premise, And indeed that you know, if terrible things happen to people, there's been
they're supposed to somehow grow out of it. But there are people that go through very challenging events and it actually makes their lives much worse and they can't get back from it. They don't get the help that they need. So to me, it all depends on circumstance and what type of person you are. So is it worth to go through a terrible event to become a stronger, better person?
So two trains I was. I didn't want to interrupt you, so, uh, the the bad things that happen to people, there's different levels to uh bad things that happen to people. So for example, losing car keys, you know, would teach somebody to hold on to the car keys more better, you know. The second point that I wanted to make on that was that and losing the house. Example, even if somebody loses their house due to a hurricane that's not in their control, it might have happened for a good reason.
Maybe it was.
Time for them to move away.
Have better opportunities someplace else. And my case, here in my town, we got destroyed by tornadoes. There was three tornadoes and one day back in April or twenty eleven, and my whole town got destroyed downtown and a lot of people I knew left but they also left and got better jobs and more opportunities, because even here there's not much here to do, and we're slowly we're building downtown. But it's a process and it teaches people patients.
So so I'm I'm gonna step in with a couple of thoughts here. Firstly, I'm strongly of the belief that people flourish in spite of trauma, not because of it. Trauma often does leave us permanently damaged, and a lot of traumas do not have an upside. For example, I don't care how much personal strength and fortitude and debility to deal with stressful situations better comes from a pair of parents losing their child to early onset cancer that
takes them before they reach their second birthday. I can't think of any lesson worth paying that price. And it's a circular argument. We suffer to get better at dealing with suffering, so we can do it better when we suffer more. Why is all that suffering necessary?
I wasn't find to fall into a social argument that's while much more going on our way that keeps its people's stuff.
But are the lessons worth the price of the other lessons worth the price of admission. I don't think they are in a lot of cases. Yeah, losing your keys doesn't really have much in the way of consequence, But losing your life or the life of someone you care about, or everything that you hold dear, or your dignity or your sanity or your agency, these are prices that should not have to be paid, whatever the outcome.
Well, I weren't going to bring up what I know some Christians would say and which time I'm considered, I guess Christianity, but I'm like the old version of it, like that died off hundreds of years ago to the belief system that it was. But I would say, well, I'm going to say what other people would probably say to that, and say that in the Bible, it talks about how the devil is a test of fates and anytime that something happens bad, and I know your example
that is pretty bad, the loss of a child. But there's always a reason for even the the extreme bad. There's always a reason for it, whether it's to teach a lesson or to make somebody emotionally stronger.
So let me let me cut you off there for a second, of Benjamin, is your God.
Good not completely. I don't believe God is all good because okay, well again then then he's he's a monster.
And I hope therefore, like a lot of the I want to know what's true, and if that God exists, I'd like to know if he does, and if you can prove it, you give us evidence, that's fine. But I hope, beyond all hope, that that megalamonoia call bully doesn't exist.
And I have a question, if God isn't all good, what's the point of having a devil? Because if God is the arbiture of what is you know, what people learn, you know, like if they if he does bring some kind of tragic event into somebody's life, to be like, well, this is the last thing you have to learn. Rather than just coming down and saying, hey, you know what, instead of you going through a horrific event, let me tell you, you know an opportunity that might come along if
you move away from your town. Instead of setting a tornado in to force people to move out, you could have just come down and said, hey, you know, I don't stay here because there's no job or opportunities. I'm going to tell you where to go get a job.
Or fix what's happening right in that community. If you are all powerful and you have the ability to do this and you don't, then there is then to me, I'm like, then you're just as evil as a devil, and you've already admitted that your God is not all good. So what's the point of having Satan? What's the point of having a deity that's capable of creating change but refuses to do so. It makes no sense.
I was going to say, I don't think the devil's the bad guy, and here's why. So originally, Lucifer was the most wisest, beautifulest angel in all the creation. And when he fail, even while he's here on earth, which there's a couple of times that I'll say to that too, but his job was to test people's faith. That's why I believe it was job. God told the devil to kill his livestock, give them boils, you know, murder his family,
and see if he still plays as God. The other flip side of that is that the devil is not able to do anything that God doesn't allow him to do. So if the devil wanted to the cause chaos, cause destruction, whatever the case, might be God is the one that's allowing that it's not the devil.
But all that does deal with a lot of the problems that we usually have with the triominy God, and that's fantastic that you're aware of those issues. My question is like, do you do you worship this God? And if so, why.
I wouldn't say I. I would say I believe in a God. Whether or not that God is on the present for all good is irrelevant because even and I don't want to go into.
The the I'm drawing a blank on it now, the thread of hell, I'm sure you can tell me what the name of it is.
I can't think at the moment.
The threat hell.
Yeah, yeah, So the people would believe in God just in case with I guess I'm kind of that way, but not really, because I believe that Jesus was the son of God. But Jesus also was a God in human form. And that's why I said my belief system died off a long time ago, because the one that that is was more Middle Ages to a leads uh, I want to say so the fourth century and then after the one took over a burned half to bits in the Bible and sounds every say, every time that screwed up.
Anyway, what I would say, Benjamin, let me let me just jump in here. So let me just let me just quickly jump in. What I would say, Benjamin, is that I would recommend that you look at the reasons why you believe what you believe, because it sounds like you're a good, reasonable, and quite logical person like you. You recognize some of the flaws in some of the
depictions and outlooks of Christians and the Christian God. And I would say that recognize maybe that it's fear that's driving you to want to believe these things, not just fear of Hell, but fear of or a preference that you'd rather have a malevolent intelligence than actual just nature for the unpredictability and the seeming randomness of nature. So I don't see malevolence in the universe. I see nature running its course for good or real, and ascribing these
things too an intelligence good or real. I find that the that tends to be the recourse of people who are afraid of the unknown. They'd rather have an evil dictator, the no leader at all.
Well, No, I believe I believe in God based on personal experience and events in my life. But at the same time, I'm not afraid of God, and I know a lot of Christianity depending on the denomination, they believe that you're supposed to fear of God. But yet God is loving and that's contradictory, which I'll point that out anyway.
But so I have a question though, if you said that you don't have a fear of God. But I think what Jamie's getting at that you know and correct me if I'm wrong that it's not. The actual fear of a god is the fear that the universe is random and it doesn't give two shits about you, doesn't give two shits about me, doesn't give it. There is no purpose and nature is just going to nature. There is no predetermination, There is no purpose for the way things kind of happen, and that can be very scary
if there is no grand scheme to anything. It is just like you know, sometimes hur you know, hurricanes topple people's houses. Sometimes, you know, people are are faced with very catastrophic things and through that they are, you know, if they have the ability and will and get help to progress, do and become better. But that comes down to choice and doesn't come down to some divine providence. And so I'm wondering if it's that fear that it
is all random. There is no grand purpose to everything, it's just the way that things are.
My belief system is pretty old fashioned. I believe in limbo, which not a lot of denominations believe in limbo anymore. But I believe in limbo, heaven and hell. I believe that the devils on earth. I believe that he has control over certain things that God allows him to do, whether that's to test people's states or just toss destructs and either answer to that would be sufficient. But that's
my belief system. I also believe that God isn't entirely good, because if he was, there wouldn't be evil in the first place.
And yeah, so again no a triomny. But the telling scene you said that makes sustinct thiss in Helen, you are correct about my standpoint on this. You said everything happens for a reason. No, he doesn't. Things happen because they happen of causes. There's such a thing as causality, but it's not like for an end, you know. And here's the thing. One of the things that I find most disturbing about ascribing these things to a higher power,
be it malevolent or benevolent. Like wonderful things happen to people all the time. We meet people that we fall in love with for the rest of our lives. We have wonderful experiences that change us in positive ways. It's not all evil in this world. There's plenty of good too. But ascribing that to some higher power, we lose our agency. We are giving it away and saying well, it can't be helped, nothing we can do about it when the
it is. If we just said well, it's the will of the gods, we wouldn't have done things like discover penicillin. We wouldn't have learned medicine, we wouldn't have learned telecommunication. We wouldn't have tried to better ourselves. Knowing that we are all we have and our effort is all we can do. We have one life, and we have one chance to make it as good as we can, and
there's no big Daddy in the sky. I twiddled in the knobs and that's what gives my life meaning to know that if I want this world to be better than it is now, I have to get off my ass and do something about it and encourage other people to do so. Know God's involved when you think about that.
Well, so the way that you look at it, you have one life. I still believe in an after life. But if you look at life and the lens of I only have one life and after that I'm going in the dort and we're turning into nature and dust to dust, then that kind of puts you in a position where you have to worst or try to accomplish all your goal's bucket list, whatever you want to call it before you die, because you do not knowing when you're going to die.
That complicated yeah, and also come to the acceptance that I'll never get everything done never, I will never be able to do everything I want. There isn't There is never going to be enough time. It's what's those existing cental horror, like the understanding of how small and weak and insignificant we are as compared to the rest of the universe, can really cause you some mental trauma. Those whole swaths of philosophy and even fiction about that feeling
of things so small. But when you accept your place in the world and the scale of your life, you understand that yeah, you might be a microscopic spect on a tiny blue ball in an insignificant part of an unremarkable galaxy, but you have friends and family and time to have wonderful experiences. And I urge you, I urge everyone to let go of the fear of some internal judge lagging his big finger at you and enjoy what you can and have a good life and improve things.
I will say this.
I don't mean to coat you off, but I will say that I've been here for a long time. I've lived in this town for about forty years. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and nineties. With that, I've always been a kid at heart, so I watched cartoons art throughout the decades. But a lot of stuff the way that the outlook on sin and Gaze and a bunch of other stuff back in the eighties and nineties. It's completely upside down now to what it used to
be thirty forty years ago, you know. And I don't know if that's because of the way the world has changed or outlook on sayings had changed. I was also going to ask you if you cared if I went into the pose of slavery, just to get your take on it, because I went into it last week with the other two hosts.
I actually was a backup host of that of that show, so I could already answer you.
I watched the show, so I heard the argument.
I have an answer for you, and you can and you can refusee you saying with slavery is wasn't all bad and that there was advantages to the slave, I mean, especially the indentured servitude. And my answer to that is that part of the price for being a slave or being a servant is the abrogation, the removing of my agency in free will. You can't quit, you can't run away. Doesn't matter how shitty my job is, how awful my boss is. I can give him the finger and tell
them to get fucked. You can't do that to your master, because if you do, they'll beat you. And that's why I don't like slavery as a concept. Even if you can, even if I granted that I'm getting a roof over my head and food in my barey and work experience or whatever, like a really really harsh internship.
What would the alternative be starving to best not having selter?
I mean you ask every slave rebel that ever broke their chains whether they prefer slavery or death.
Yeah, And that's the thing, is that and that, like men, I heard you argument last week, I'm and I just don't understand the need to want to make slavery, Okay, I do not understand it and any context in any
way over time. Slavery is horrible because it is basically saying that other groups are human beings, are subsets, They're not complete people, and we have and other people have the right to own them and use them for all sorts of things, whether it be sexual slavery, labor, slavery, whatever it is, is basically saying I get to decide what you do and what you what I can can and cannot what to use your body for. That is slavery and no way over time, any argument that somebody
makes is going to make that. Okay.
I disagreed with the way that slavery with slaves was treated in that video. I've said that as it is twenty one women says that you can beat your slaves. I don't agree with that, and I've said that in the video.
I know that, But what I'm saying is is the why but why even try to make even benevolent slavery, you know, like argue for that slavery slavery. That's the way it is, slavery, slavery. I'm saying I have the right basically, like I could make you my slave. Do you want to be my slaves? Do you want me to tell you what to do and not do and me and like make you take care of my house and mow my lawn and not pay you and you can't leave. You have no choice. You don't have agency, even if I'm super nice.
Well, I my point was is that in some ways benefit I mean posing cons wearing the posing cons to the other person's point. What they said is that even an indented servitude, if it provides housing and you won't for the person for a certain amount of time to pay off a debt with this is what I so what I was always told, inventive servitude is paying after debt from somebody.
And and to reiterate the point that was made last week, which I agree with, it's usually predatory and this and you're trapped. This is the thing if you're an indented servitude, In indented servitude, it's usually you are you are doing orders of magnitude more labor for what you get, and
you can't leave. There's no doubt. You can't run away, you can't quit, you can't even say no. That's one of the wonderful things about an actual job is if someone tells you to do something that you are morally against or physically incapable of, or something that's super dangerous, you can just quit. You can say no, I'm not going to do that. And so all of the downsides to slavery that you say, oh, well, if you take away that you talk about that, you're just describing work.
You just described me an internship and unpaid internship.
Like and Ben, have you ever been a slave? H No, not, so you're talking from a place of privilege.
Have you.
I bet if you talk to anyone that's been an indentured servant or ever been a slave, and say, hey, do you prefer being a slave even though you got a roof and food in your belly or the ability, even though it might be harder to make your own choices and to have agency over your own life, I guarantee one hundred percent of those people would probably say yes, I prefer having my freedom I can't maybe ninety nine point nine percent, okay, I want to say one hundred percent, okay,
because that's you know, I want to make absolute proofs. But a majority of people, a good portion love all of us, really like having agency, and we really like having the ability to make decisions for ourselves and not for anyone us to hold us to their will.
I was going to make a point on kind of the little poles and the Bible force slavery after seven years and you let the slave go free. I know, I believe that was for Hebrew slaves only, and then the and I was going to debate mad on this, percause Matt loves to debate slavery.
Well, we don't. We don't actually love to debate slavery because we feel that the subject is closed, there is no defense, because I don't care if I'm going to be let go in seven years, if I'm tired of being used as farm equipment after seven days, I should be able to leave. So the whole oh, you must release your slaves, and also this whole two tiered racism basically in slavery as well, that's bad. That's a that's
not a feature, that's a bug. That's still bad. So I really would discourage you from trying trying at all to defend slavery, because the only way you ever get to defend it is what happened last week, is to stand the edges off so much that you're basically describing work rather than slavery.
Yeah, but I also said it benefits of the economy at the time, which.
Is never ever a justification for something. You know what else benefits an economy? Fucking stealing shit, invading countries. My forefathers stole the world. It was great for the economy. We built so much colt shit. It's brilliant, apart from all of the horrific, horrific things we had to do to hundreds of thousands and millions of people to get that economy. No, economy is never a justification.
And I'm curious, why are you trying to justify this in any way? Like why, what's the point? Because we know it's bad, So I don't understand why we're trying to do these mental gymnastics and trying to explain away slavery, Like what then, I'm really trying to understand why you're trying to make an argument for this.
I was doing get more to help Christians that you know, because a lot of the Christians that call into this show, they try to bend those are back words and protect the words of you know, the slavery in the Bible at this twenty one Levidicus. And so they call in and then Matt or somebody else points out all the flaws that they have. And so one of the reasons I was going to try to debate slavery last week was because I was trying to make a case that it was more good than bad, to try to appeal
to a larger audience. I mean, it was also my take on it as far asude, well, you.
May have actually done what you're set out to do, because if any Christians watching these calls, and again I don't mean to dump on your Benjamin, I appreciate your call, and I appreciate that you've been a very reasonable interlocutor, like you seem like a very very reasonable person. But your arguments are bad, and if a Christian sees that they're bad, they go, well, I won't want to argue those arguments. Actually, slavery is probably just shit all around.
I probably shouldn't defend it. Ever, you're awesome, man. I really like how you take these things in good humor. I appreciate I appreciate your Benjamin, thank you very much.
Well. Other than that, that's I mean that pretty much is the Carl. I was gonna try to point out how evil is good and just teaching people lessons blast lessons and making their mental stronger. Mental capacity is stronger. Now. I get there's a difference between losing your car keys and losing your house, obviously, but I was still trying to make the point that some bad turns are good in the long one.
And just again to reiterate, I think that the good that comes from it does not outweigh the bad in most circumstances, and in some circumstances there is no good. But I'm going to have to bring this call to a closer Benjamin. Again, I'd like to thank you, and I assure you that people watching this call will find it educational. You got any last words, I am.
No, this is this is a really good call. I'm glad that you know. I hope we give you some a little bit more stuff to think about, ben And in regards to your argument and maybe reconsider some of the positions, maybe we should just get rid of the idea that slavery is good in any way. You can do both. You can believe in a god and also think slavery is bad. You can't. They are not mutually exclusive.
Thank you all, Chief. We take care.
Man Lobe.
Okay, again, a very constructive call. I'm not joking when I say I really enjoyed. I enjoyed the call last week. I enjoyed that call this week. Like he's coming from he's like trying to defend pretty abhorrent things, but he obviously knows that the depictions are bad. And yeah, but yeah, So moving on. We've got a few announcements to me on August twenty sixth, which is hurtling towards us as a speed of nuts. We have our back crews, our
annual back crews. Tickets are selling. You can go ahead and get yours at the at the address a tiny dot C C forward slash back crewise and if you deign to join us on that auspicious boat or boats, actually you may run into people such as Forest of alke secularity j Mike ejectively, Dan me, I'll be there, Kelly Loft in so many people you can pester us. You can ask us questions. You could poke us in the face. We don't do that without asking first. So yeah,
thats again, tiny dot CC forward slash bad Cruise now, Helen. Yes, our producer, lovely gentleman Richard. He's having a well deserved vacation right now, and we decided that while the cat's away, the mice will play, And by play, I mean sell a bunch of sweet swag at a huge discount in our store. So if you go to the the site of the Forward slash merchdh I believe or a merch pardon me, you can use the promo code. Don't tell Richard. That's all caps, no punctuation, no spacing. Don't tell Richard
to get discounts off everything. We have all kinds of core stuff in there. I would thoroughly encourage you to do so. Maybe grab some before the back crew so you can uh rock the fit, as they say in the youth. I think I am, in fact wearing a bit of a c a swig myself today, so it's fantastic stuff. Just don't tell Richard You'll get man. Don't tell him you'll be very upset, super super upset man. And we have also had in some superb chats that have come up. I'm going to read a couple. Let's
see what we got here. We have one monkey typewriter, two dollars would be would be worse if Gojira open. It depends on which era I mean, because in certain areas he was a friend to the people, and sometimes it's not. If it's Shing Godzilla or Godzilla minus one, No, that guy's bad.
He will destroy go Jira is a band, are They're a metal band Godzilla?
So I mean, so if it would be cool if God's a little bit the Olympics, you know, I don't think there would.
Be much of some sports going on, but Goji is a metal band, and I'm all for all metal bands opening every sporting event.
I still remember when metal won the Eurovision Song Contest at one time. That was great. Thanks we have William Mattis mates, Mattis Brove to Jamie, Wonderbolts Brove to Jamie and hello to Helen. I hope you're having wonderful times. Don't go super crazy because of fists. Love you too and the crew, Thank you very much, love much love to you all too. We don't go that crazy. We have our we have our ways of coping, usually bitching about things on the discord. But next we have Thomas
Wachter Washta. Hello, moderators and helpers of the show. Your help is so important to our community. As I said, yeah, we literally couldn't do what we do without the tireless efforts of those very talented people behind the camera. Next, and uhcrn, Bennette, we've got We've got a slew of them coming in. We've got secularity hosts of the show. Excellent, gentleman. I mean, I love that guy.
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Please okay, okay, all right? What is thick and sticky and falls from the sky The second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Let him come on to you and into you and you should find salvation. Buy me dinner first, big Jay.
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Ten minute, so yes, please don't cancel us. Okay, And so I think we have enough call up and ready are you ready for this?
I am ready, Freddy okay.
So we have a nontheist pagan d pronounce her in Ayr, arguing for existence of spiritual realm that exists alongside the physical, can be accessed through meditation and ritual. Welcome to Welcome to the show.
D Hi, thanks for having me.
Okay, I'm going to immediately hand you over to Helen on this one because I think she's got quite a lot to talk to you about this.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, d So tell me your why you think there is a spiritual realm.
The I call now.
I want to make sure you guys understand I did not call in to give you true but I did want to argue for, you know, the possibility that the spiritual realm does exist. I I am a practicing pagan. I'm a non theist, so I do not believe in any gods. I believe that the spiritual is a realm that responds to meditation and ritual and will I have have experience interacting with this realm. I do not interact with spirits or personalities at all. This is a realm, is the only word that I can kind of come
up with. I feel that it is, you know, by definition, non physical but accessible.
Is that makes sense?
Okay?
So I was involved in the pagan community for thirteen years and as a high Pricistan for ten. So this is something that I also used to believe. And I'm curious as to what experience did you have to you know, kind of make you feel that this thing, you know, the spiritual realm is something that is part of our reality. Like what was the experience that you're like, huh, maybe there maybe there's something here.
Okay.
So I've been solitary and I've been part of the coven. I not wickan.
I believe, uh.
Maybe you might be able to apply the word animists to me as well. So I've had several experiences, but one in particular I can share with you. Several years ago, I needed to have a surgery, and when I reported forward the pre op process, they found that my iron level was severely low, very low. So we couldn't do
the surgery at that time. And the doctor told me, I mean, of course, I took you know, iron supplements, but the doctor told me he did not expect me to be able and my levels were so low and not cause problems too, But my levels were so low he did not expect that I would be ready for surgery for another six to eight weeks. I did, I did some research, I took my supplements, and I did a ritual that I won't board you with details there.
But my levels increased to normal within three weeks and I was able to get my surgery sooner than the doctor, you know said. The surgeon said he could not explain why my levels had come up so fast.
So the question that comes across my mind with that day is that I mean, you were following doctor's orders, which is fantastic. One of the things that really gets me about certain people who believe in the supernatural is that they will use it and only it and ignore the things that we know about medicine and science. And
thank you for taking those I supplements. But let me ask you this, is it possible that the doctor was just being a bit conservative and maybe you were a bit more resident, your body was a bit more resilient than it thought. Because these things do happen. People recover faster than they think than they initially think. I personally work in a health adjacent field and a charity, so I hear stories all the time people seem to make almost miraculous recoveries. But also I hear stories of people
suddenly going downhill with no explanation. And my question is, how could we tell whether it was just a bit of a coincidence and a perfectly natural explanation for your iron levels suddenly recovering faster than thought, or a supernatural intervention.
And I agree with you, you know, I cannot discount that possibility absolutely, Okay, I can only say that that is only one experience among many that has returned to.
Me and have you ever had a ritual fail ritual fail?
Yeah, I have experienced there.
Yeah, okay, so it doesn't seem particularly reliable, and people tend to count the hits. So I'm actually a proponent of of of secular practice of religious things, you know, like going through the motions for your own regargnissance without believing that they have power. I think it's perfectly fine, especially as a way to sort of honor tradition and
keep up these things. But believing that these things have power without having any any evidence of it, and in fact seen and fail as fun as they succeed, it does puzzle me sluntly that people would still continue to believe some of these so hitting miss.
Sure, sure, And and I have you know, I know, I know. One fallacy is listening to you guys and people like Matt and Forrest and Eric. I'm learning about.
How logic works.
And I you know, definitely having you know, listened to you all, I'm seeing, you know, the holes in my suppositions. I very much believe in, you know, following doctor's orders, driving on the right started road, not sticking my finger in the you know.
Electrical socket.
But I've found that my pagan practice enhances my experience in the physical world.
So so what you're doing from a psychological aspect is that you are priming your brain to do when you do a ritual, like you're doing a ritual for your health or for anything that we would call manifestation in the paking community, what you want to bring into your life. What you're basically doing when you're doing these meditative ritual
practices is that you're priming your brain. And like this is done through people that do mindfulness meditation, it's the same thing where you want to bring your consciousness more aware of your environment to you know, be aware of certain things that you would like to see happen. You know, this is why they always say, like, you know, if you're going to do a ritual, you're for your health.
Also do what your doctor says. But this might be but if you're going to do any sort of ritual, even if it has no supernatural process to it, it does bring a calming effect to the body and it can also help us psychologically deal with the stress of these events in our lives that feel kind of overwhelming, like health crisis and he is losing a job, you know, financial changes, family changes, relationship changes. But this is all
a psychological effect. There's nothing really external going on. It is all kind of happening within the brain and what and this is what and this is not that different from prayer. You know, we're putting that we like, we want to kind of separate it because like, well, it's a spiritual realm or there's some kind of you know, the secret where you can just you know, if you ask for something and think about it enough, it will manifest into your life. No, this is this is a
form of psychological priming. You are getting your brain prepared to associate things that you think have supernatural significance when really you've tricked your brain to recognize it, and it feels profound, it feels like something that was supposed to happen because you already have that expectation that it is, when really it's just some Because you've gone through the process of doing the ritual psychologically priming your brain, you are now prepared you on a on some kind of
subconscious level, to associate things that's seeing profound, seeing supernatural seem to be coming from a source outside of ourselves. That are we're bringing it to us, when really we have just done psychological triggery. We do this all the time, and it can because we are as Jamie said, you know, hitting the miss I mean at counting the counting the hits and ignoring the misses. They feel significant, they feel really really deep and profound, and it feels like every
thing kind of came together. But at the same time, I do agree rituals are very important. I still do ritual. I enjoyed doing ritual, but I also recognize that that this is something I'm doing to myself and there's nothing external, supernatural or anything that's happening. This is not this is the power within myself to bring about change that I want to see, but using my brain power to do it, not doing anything nothing external. There's nothing outside, you know,
there's no gods, there's no spirits, there's nothing. It's just me and also ask and getting the help from other people along the way, like a doctor or whatever.
Okay, yeah, that all sounds yeah, I can get with that. And the phrase timing of brain is actually a very apt description of how I have felt about ritual because with you know, in the group that I practiced with, our definition of ritual was the process of preparing your mind to be open to the spiritual possibilities. So in a way, you know, I guess that I'm looking at tryming. I'm still looking at priming your brain as being part
of you know, the ritual. But I and before you you you brought me live on the on the poll, I was thinking about the missus and you know, understanding that when it's the internet process getting your brain ready, it's, you know, like anything else, practice makes perfect. That that was kind of the way I felt about it. But I definitely understand. Yeah, what what you're saying about, you know, the brain.
And we would say, or would say, is that I mean, I know that especially in sort of it like atheism, space and the discourse, there's a reputation for people to start like really picking holes in people's you know, things and almost belittling them, and we don't want to do that here. It seems that you're yeah, and it seems that whether you believe they actually have actual supernatural power or not, you're not letting your beliefs get in the way of things that are proofable, which is fantastic and
they have some benefit to you. So all we would ask is you don't have to stop doing them. I've done rituals in context before. I used to do martial arts, and we would we would bow to our weapons and and and thank them. I didn't believe that my sword was alive, but it did make me concentrate on the task at hand, which is a really good idea when you swing around a three foot long razor blade. And so continuing the rituals is not a problem. All we
would ask is, use look, examine your epistemology. Why do you believe what you believe, and are the reasons actually good? And talk to people. Feel free to come onto the discord and chat to people on there and examine. We have practicing pagans on there as well. It's not just atheists on there, and people at all stages of their their deconstruction journey. So you might want to just bounce some ideas off some folks.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
One last thing that I would say is that you were talking about, you know, the mindset type of meditation. That's I've taken a lot of stuff from Buddhism.
Sorry about that, I mean, yeah, no.
I you know, when I usually when I identify myself, I use I do say that I'm a Pagan Buddhist, but I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to confuse the issue. But you will give me some very good things to think about and different ways of thinking, and definitely studying my systemology is a good idea. I'm going to do that.
And if you do end up coming to the conclusion that you were believing in things for less than ideal reasons, please don't beat yourself up about it. We are all susceptible to fallacy. We are but human, and it takes people decades to the program themselves from beliefs that they've held, especially ones that they hold very Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I very long ago, I was a fundamentalist Christian. You could have almost told me a Christian nationalist in some ways, so I've wrong a lot.
Yeah, that's that's an amazing journey you've been on, and you been doing that. You've exhibited mental fortitude and strength and and and like, I'm kind not jealous as such, but I'm slightly in all I had, I haven't had to question myself quite as quite as thoroughly as that. So well done.
Yeah, and and also too, like I want to point out that I'm like I am an atheist, but I still find a lot of enjoyment in pagan rituals and sudden the teachings of them. I just let go of all the supernatural things, and and I want to emphasize if you are a non believer, but there are still things that you really like to do as far as rituals, holidays,
things like that. Don't stop doing them if they bring you joy, if it makes you feel connection to things, but also realize that this is just something we've been doing since people be people, and it's okay. You can Again, they're not mutually exclusive. You can have ritual and enjoy doing ritual and also be an atheist. You can do both, so you know, and they do have benefits, you know. But I always say, like you know, as Jamie was saying about, you know, question epistemology. You know, why do
I think this is true? Why do I you know, why do why do I have this belief? And then you know, and then walk yourself through those questions, and usually, like I have found, now that there is nothing supernatural, those rituals actually hold a little bit more significance because it's something that I'm choosing to do, and it's something I'm not worshiping anything. It's just a part of my life and giving meaning to my existence. And I think
that can be just as powerful. You know, you know as people that claim that you know if they go to church every Sunday, you know that, you know that Jesus really likes say when they show up.
Thank you, guys, thank you very much for the discussion, and.
Don't hang. What I'm going to do is I'm going to pop you back into the screen room, into the queue so the moderators can give you the details for the discord if you want to get involved with that, because I personally would love for you to get involved with the community. I think you would be a valuable addition. I think you could teach a lot of people some lessons. So I'm going to go ahead and pop you back in there and thank you honestly for calling you.
Thank you, thank you, yeah, thank you do. This is a really great conversation I hope to see in the discord. I'm there so.
And speaking of the discord, just for everyone else there, there will be an after show. I'm a badare our backup host Kelly often will be there. I believe you're going to be there too, helenful years. And if you want to get involved with that nonsense, oh it's not nonsense. Sometimes it's nonsense. You can go to tiny dot cc forward slash ACD discord at ACD discord and get yourself signed up. I promise we don't swear too much, and I'm only drunk sometimes.
I mean you, you don't swear very e much. You speak for yourself there, sir.
Say all the words, the J word, the Q. Anyway, Speaking of words, words are also names, and I would like you to read out a very special list of names that we do each week, and that is our top five patrons. These are people who give very much of themselves to the community and we literally couldn't do what we do with that their wonderful contribution. So if you would do the honors.
Yes again, if I say your name wrong, I apologize, but I'm going to read our top five patrons again. Also, thank you very much for all our wonderful patrons. Number one is try and Trude Dingleberry Jackson. Number two is oops All Singularity. Number three devo devo vulge, and I told you I'm I'm not that great. Number four is Khalive Helvetti and number five is left in the leaves and and our honorable mention this week is Ahmed k Handy.
So thank you to all of my patrons. So if you want to give us money and become a patron and get all the little perks that comes with being a patron, you should go to tiny dot cc dash, patreon thh and become a patron because that'd be really great and you can get all kinds of like get all the little perks that comes with a patron, and then you can also join us in the discord afterwards as well, and it'd be super fun indeed.
So that's that's fantastic for the patriots. Thank you very much. And I think I have Speaking of people giving us money, we have another super chat Todd Green new member. Yeah, one of us, one of us ten dollars looking fabulous, wifey, wifey, wife you and the bald bearded bloke putting on a quality show. I'm also reminded of Bill Badies saying his head resembles an egg and hair falls down like a shower curtain.
Jimmie, Well, my husband is also a ball bearded bloke, So three cheers for the ball beard blogs out there. Thank you, husband has been I love you. And oh thank you everyone that's giving us super chats and in the chat and talking and engaging. We love all that stuff. So thank you all for being here. It's really really wonderful. Thank you for all of you that participating in the show what it is. Thank you so much.
Indeed, indeed, now we've got a little thing we do most weeks. I wanted to just sort of get them up because some people are brave enough to calling, like our friends Benjamin and Die who have had fantastic calls with us today. Some people are a little bit more
indirect with their commentary on what we do. We do get comments on the clips that we put on our social media, and so I'd like to ask the crew to put up a couple of those, if they could bring up screenshot one that's my chid face saying that I use pronouns. I'm going to remind myself of exactly what it says. Bear with me a moment, because it's hilarious. This clown, Hankhag uses pronouns that should disqualify any word that he speaks.
Don't we all use pronouns?
I'm confused, Well, actually, actually, Helen Green, I would like to get Helen Green's perspective on this comment. If Helen Green would be so good as to give Helen Green's perspective, it would be very interested.
Well, thank you, Jamie. I will give Helen Green's opinion on this particular comment because Jamie asked me to. So, Okay, I don't know who said this, and if you're watching, we all use pronouns. Guess why you use the pronoun in that comment. So I am confused on how if you use pronouns and make it disqualifies you from having an opinion. Please explain, because that's how language works.
Yeah, it's it's it's kind of nuts. And you hear all the same arguments like, oh, they doesn't refer to one person. It's like, yes, it's been used in use for more than six centuries as a singular pronoun, and it's not tough to call people by their preferred pronouns. I may very very very very slightly understand someone getting a bit confused with neo pronouns, but they are so exceptionally rare. He hears she her, they them, it's not that hard, and you're basically again getting bent out of
shape because you want to be offend. You want to be offended, you want to be offended. It's just that it's that simple for being accused of being reactionally snowflakes, as we are often here in the more progressive side of the spectrum. It's amazing how easy it is to fucking trigger a Christian.
I'm I am constantly baffled when because we do. If someone like I'm just gonna use as an example, like you're a genie. Let's say you somebody's like, nope, I'm going to call you jeans and you're like, no, I'm not called jeans. I'm called genie. You would get annoyed, and you would and you would feel disrespected because someone is insisting on calling you something that is not your
name and how you want to be referred. This goes for every buddy like, no one's gonna start calling me, you know, Heather and get and get away with it, because I'm like, no, any name is Helen, call me Helen.
Further to that point, I don't know whether you're psychic or something, but yes, that is the only variant of my name that I don't that I don't like people using call me Jim Jim Jim, jimbo Jim Jum, Jim jid. Shame us whatever you like, but James, for these for the reason you just gave is someone saying that they know me better than I do. And people in my
life have used it to psychologically bully me. So it isn't nice, and you know it isn't nice, and you're doing it on purpose to hurt people, and that makes you a bad person if you miss miss use people's pronouns on purpose. Anyway, Sorry, a little bit emotional there? Could we get up at number seven? Is me again? It's almost like I've been on the show a few times. I swear atheism is a religion all day every day
worrying about what others people believe obsessively. Okay, okay, Well, first of all, religion has very much connotations like dogmas and dictates and stuff, and atheism is that one answer to one question, is there a God? I don't believe them. He's God of gods. And secondly, I don't spend all day every day worrying about what the people believe. I have other thoughts in my head. I do spend a lot of time worrying about what people believe, because beliefs
inform actions and actions matter. So yes, if you believe that a person should not be given certain rights because of how they live their life, or their sexuality, or their ethnic state or their gender identity, then that belief is a bad belief because it informs bad actions. And I'm going to think about that. What do you think?
Okay? I always say I don't care what you believe in until that belief is causing harm. And yes I'm an atheist, and yes I'm an atheist activist. I not only volunteer, I volunteer recovery from religion. And the reason why I worry about people's beliefs because I hear stories again and again and again of how religion has hurt people, cause real trauma, real distress in their lives. That is why we do what we do, because it's not because we are like trying to stick it to the believers.
You know, if your beliefs didn't cause harm, we wouldn't be here.
Yeah, I could still have academic conversations about the weaknesses in your epistemology or whatever, blah blah blah, but that'd be around a couple of years offline. You know I only do this in front of the camera because belief is doing real harm. So you know also that I'm a massive attention horror and ncessity.
Yeah, well, it's health. We're healthy narcissists. That's that's an important thing. You give me a narcissist as long as it's healthy.
I'm barely held together shipwreck of impostor syndrome and euroses. It's fine.
I know who I am. You're confident in it. I'm an ambity woman.
And to segue from one person who self deprecates more than they should to someone else who absolutely self deprecates more than they should. I would actually like to bring on our wonderful backup host Kay Laughlin, who continuously says that, oh no, it's not I don't do nothing. You're calling. So what do you think of the show? Ken?
You know, Jamie, I took I took something from you last week. I wrote down some notes for each of the callers. And Ben. Ben is a habit of like a redefining words. I think, like is a tornado really evil or is it just a piece of nature? I mean it's like calling a tree evil or a river evil.
It doesn't make any sense to me. So it's like he's trying to redefine what evil is to make his religion look better, just the same way he did with slavery last week, trying to redefine it into indentured servitude to make it look better for his religion. And I think people need to pay more attention to definitions, at least Benjamin does. He needs to find out what definitions are and that they do actually have meetings and then d D great call.
I feel for you.
I myself had a miraculous recovery. A few years ago. My left foot turned, I mean it really so dark purple, it was almost black, and it lasted for months. I was misdiagnosed as having a blockage in the micro arteries of my foot, and they were going to cut my foot off. I almost had my foot ink. And then one day I was looking over my own medical records and I realized that I might have a B twelve deficiency.
So I started taking massive amounts of B twelve. About seven days before the operation, I have my foot cut off and my foot got better. So was that a miraculous discovery or was that just recovery? Or was that just science? Helping me out. And I had no religious leanings at all from it before that, and I still have none after it, so it didn't change anything for me.
And I always wonder when you have people like that that think, like, well, I'm doing a ritual and it's good for me, how do you know, How do you know that it's actually going to do good for you? Because I don't always know that any of my actions are going to be good for me, even in the best intentions, ones are going to be good for me in the future. So I think it's really important to question what your actions are and what you think about
your future. And that's about it. That's my thought from the show, So I'm quite a few of them.
Actually, I think that's the you make up a good point, Kelly, because just with ritual or prayer that if things work out, then it was meant to be. If things don't worked out, then there was a blessing you had to learn. There's always this explanation away of you know, our actions, because guess what, we're very good at reasoning and justifying things good or bad, you know, so you know, and really that just comes down to a decision. Also, I do
think some trees are evil. They can look a little shady.
Dad joke, Well fantastic, I think. I say we had some good calls today and thank you everybody for tuning in. Just a quick minder once again, back Cruise weekend twenty fourth, come along time you not see c Ford slash back Crews, get your merch fifteen percent off, not Cee c Ford slash merch Aca, don't tell Richard and we are sending out lover rings to everyone out there because if you
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