I'm speaking with folks that I go to school with at my Christian university lately, and someone made a joke about an atheist baby. I thought that was interesting and pointed out that there's no such thing as an atheist baby. There's no such thing as a Christian baby either. There's just babies. Babies have to be taught that they're fundamentally sinning and unworthy of love and everything is given as
a grace to them. They have to be taught that they have to submit to an arbitrary and capricious God, or else they will burn forever in hell. Because I don't have to teach my children this, I get to appreciate them for just who they are, these wonderful, hilarious, emotionally fascinating creatures. I can see them for them, and not as future missionaries or as potential fodder for an eternal flame. So do you think that I'm a bad mom for not introducing my children to God explicitly?
Or do you wish maybe you had been raised without religion?
Either way, give us a call, because the show is starting now. I was just gonna start wooing like just on my own, just out of like excitement, and then I forgot there was an audience for a second, and so I was just like, oh, yeah, that was so great. Anyway, Hello, welcome everyone. Today is Sunday, March twenty third, twenty twenty five. I am your host, Sophia Spina, and here next to me is a lovely Thomas Westbrook, also known as Holy kool Aid, known from Holy kool Aid.
How you doing.
Hey, It's great to be on. It's bell while. Yeah, I think it's been a few years since I've been in one of these seats.
How do you feel?
Great to be back? It's good to be on and so much has changed. So much has changed, a few new faces, a few old faces, but overall just you guys continue to keep plugging away and doing good work.
Yeah, this is our first time hosting together. Obviously I'm one of the newer faces, you know.
So yeah, yeah, I'm one of the old guard from long long ago. I just realized that this this year will be the ten year anniversary of launching my channel. So I've been at this for a while.
That's amazing ten years, ten years, nine years full time. But that makes me feel old or are you like? What what's like a big maybe lesson.
Don't remind me. I still like when people carved me at the bar. But yeah, you know, if I shave this off and then then I have a little bit of a baby face. I haven't done botox or anything, but it's not too Yeah, I like to think that at least.
Yeah, you could just be a very stressed out child with crow's feet.
You know, fair just be you know, these odds have seen things.
Oh my god, I love it. Is there any like big like takeaway from ten years if you were to be like, what's what's a thing?
Ooh? I mean, I think one major thing is that, like you can't get too hung up on whether or not you change a specific person's mind. The important thing is that you're you're doing your best, You're getting good information out there, do your research. There's no excuse nowadays, it's I mean, especially with chat ept and with other tools that are making it easier and easier to gather
gather information and source information and perplexity, et cetera. Like there's no reason that we can't figure out how something works. But if you do your research and you have these conversations, just keep at it, stay strong, because like there's always going to be drama and in fighting, both with your own groups and with groups that you're taking on and that you're trying to persuade. But you can't get too
caught up emotionally in the outcomes. But I think in the long term we're having domino effects and those those domino effects work. I like that.
It was almost like a moment of just like, that's the show for today. That's how we need to know. Is just that there you go.
That is have I been talking a whole hour and a half?
You gave us an hour and a half where it's That was some very efficient wisdom. I would say, you know that that was great. I didn't just for audience knowledge. I did not tell her I was going to ask him that question. I didn't think of it until he said that right then. That was just all on the fly. So well done, sir. Part of what's exciting about today is that we are in person here at the Free Thought Library, and we have a live audience. Like I mentioned right there, Yeah, this.
Is all real. This is not an AI generated table right there. This is not a green scream.
Yes, look at the number of fingers he has. It's correct.
Yay, yeah, that's I feel like some I'll feel threatened by AI when it figures out how many fingers people have. So yeah, definitely collin with whatever is on your mind today.
But real quick, we want to remind you that.
Talk Heathen is a product of the Atheist Community of Austin, which is where we're at here in the Free Thought Library, which is 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. So if you're down for not being told what to do by religious demagogues, come hang out with us.
It's pretty cool.
Talk Heathen 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 you can call from your computer at tiny dot cc slash call t H. That's five one two nine nine to one nine two four to two or tiny dot CEC slash call t H. Both of these are also at the bottom of the screen, so you can just like look there if you don't, you know, remember from my little little jiggy call there, I really just started talking and like beat really.
Quick, all right.
But first before we just hate calls, we are going to talk do our weekly segment, talk heathen to Me. So it's time for talk Ethan to Me segment, which is where we get into.
The question of the week.
Last week we asked you what is the most surprising thing in God's browser history? Oh my goodness, and here are top three answers, which Johnny and Katie have a tough time choosing because they were all so good. So, oh yeah, that's it definitely makes sense. Okay, So Thomas, do you want to go ahead and read out number three from mister Mark Corey.
Yes, from God's own browser history, non lethal alternatives to drowning the world. Geez, well, I guess you kind of shot himself in the foot with that rainbow because you know, I can't I can't do can't do a global flood anymore. But you know, the Bible never says anything about fire, so he can go true.
Apocalypsis just sinkholes for everyone.
That Christian legally is God's Like, gotcha? Grab number two?
Yeah, definitely, So number two with why Sally b you want to hit it?
Top baby names for year one?
Oh my gosh, I love that there's that one movie where somebody says they're talking about wine and they're like, was one a good year?
And I feel like I love that.
I mean, if you think about it now, you can pull up okay, in the last ten years or this year one of the most common names, because there's all these other people that have been naming their kids. But if you're God and there's no one around, it's like, is Barb a good name? Like nobody's ever been named before.
I'm gonna go ahead and say, yes, Blarb is an excellent name. Your child will have a distinguished life, good or bad so. And then number one Joe Beforetuna says do you want to want to throw that?
I would you impregnate own mom with me?
Oh that hurts? Yeah, one would have to google that, and.
You shall name every manual that was also in the top baby names, like after he chose at on here.
Oh my goodness, I feel like I'm in my brain. There's just sort of a long sketch going on that incorporates all of these so like snil style, Yeah, Sunday Night Live, although I'm sure some horrible church has done that and it was terrible, all right, The prompt for next week is finish the joke three wise men walk into a stable. Do you have an idea for this? Three wisemen walk into a stable?
Three wise men walk into a stable? And I'm drawing blanks.
Which is why we need you to write down below what your best answer for.
This question is.
Post your best answer below in the video comments, and next week we will read them all out. So I'm anxious to see what our audience comes up with, and so yeah, post it in the comment section and tune in next week. We can we can see what y'all have come up with, all right. I also want to mention that this show is not done just with us. Obviously, we're in this huge studio. There's a ton of amazing
people that help with this. So if we can show the crew real quick, those are our heroes in every way.
Look at all them folks, they're amazing.
The Heathen's behind the scenes. Then's, oh my goodness, maybe they're not. It's a terrible joke, but a wonderful crew, so great for that.
We love them all right.
So we're still looking like we have some calls coming in and people are still looking at them, and let's see oh nope, we got them out there, all right, So let's see. I'm sorry, I'm like talking out loud or thinking out loud as we go. All right, let's talk about let's talk with Cliff he him from Ohio.
Evolution versus Creation?
Yeah, all right, Cliff, tell us about your thoughts on evolution versus creation.
Yeah, we can hear you. What would what would you like to what would you like to bring up?
Okay, all right, yeah, I've I've got some thoughts on some boughs. Just willing to talk with you guys for a little bit and I'll tell you why cool. I've watched some of your YouTube stuff and I see where there are some kids on there that are watching you are going to church, and they're starting to question whether there's a guy or not. And I don't have a problem if it's me and you, but I have a problem with kids. So there you go. I'm just laying
that out for you a little bit. Okay, but if you wanted, if you would like to discuss a little bit of creation and versus evolution, I can do that. I'm not a I'm not an apologist or apologetic or whatever they are. But uh, I mean we can start in genders is one, and you can go and then some of that. I've listened to you. It's about well, grass couldn't grow without the sun, right, I've heard your comments on that, so you can go through creation.
I mean, so it's kind of what you said you wanted to call in about God. So so, yeah, can you give us a good like summary of you tell us like in a in a bullet point because it's, you know, a Collins show, so we don't have it be conversation. What do you think is the major flaw with the idea of evolution?
What's the major flaw with evolution?
Yeah?
Okay, how did everythings start?
Well, so you you go there so close?
How did what what evolved into a man? Where'd it come from? Yeah?
So this is actually a very good question. There are two different fields of science, right One is a biogenesis, which is the origin of life itself, and then you have evolution, which is once you have these cells, how do they change over time? And the second one, evolution is something that we clearly see happening right now. You can look at a bacteria and you see mutations, you see it changing, you see it pick up new genetic material.
You see things over from one generation to the next, passes on traits, and the traits that are beneficial to survival stay and the ones that aren't get lost. And there's a lot of complications that go into it, but that's the gist of it. Now. Evolution we see in every field of science. This isn't just in the fossil record, although we have that. This isn't just in looking at like the geological time scale. It isn't just withdi radiometric dating.
It isn't just with you know, paleontology or biology. Like it's every single field of science. It all fits the data, it all fits. If it's like even diagram where all of the data is like clustered in one place, all of these circles, all of these these different fields of science, it all overlaps on evolution. So I think what you're asking is how do we get life from non life so that evolution can get started? And for that, if you.
How do we get how do we get anything?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, that's anything start? Where was what was your Oh.
Well, I was just gonna say, I think that that's a really good question. There is actually a lot more science that's been done on this, a lot of experiments that have shown that the building blocks for life do form together naturally. So you do have things like amino acids and nucleic acids and things carbohydrates and lipids and things that do form on their own. And there's been experiments like the miller Uri experiment, and that was back
in the forties. There's been hundreds of experiments since then that have been looking at the different mechanisms whereby this could happen. And we've got a lot of pieces of the puzzle where we can see, oh, hey, you have these normal forces of nature that are causing these things to form together on their own. Now you can go further back and further back and further back, and we don't have every piece of the puzzle, and we're not
gonna pretend like we do. But when you have all of these pieces that all align with this one picture, then you start seeing that. You start seeing how stars form naturally, how all that stars need is gravity, matter and time, and then they form and they fuse together, and these giant fireballs and eventually there's so much pressure that it ignites. It doesn't need anything more than the basic laws of the universe for stars to start, and then as they burn up their fuel, they collapse in
on themselves and explode outward. And all of that matter, all of those those basic elements that have been fused together in this high pressure environment and formed more complex atoms. Like we see these things go from less complex to more complex. And it's something that we can study, that we can know. And when you start to get all of those pieces, when you're really curious about this and you dive deep into it, then this is the direction
that it points. Does that kind of answer your question?
Okay? Well then how no? Not really? So okay, what about when the Bible says that everything gives, everything comes of its own seed, everything gives after its own time.
Why do I ask you to answer the question of how evolution works by looking at what the Bible says?
Why are we only bound to that?
Okay, you're you're not I'm asking you on my side now, I'm starting with the Bible. You've been with your scientific How about the Bible? So but me doesn't we don't have to stick science because here you go go ahead.
Well we don't you know, you're saying, we're talking on your side? Now, first of all, you can't say that it's our side of science and your side is the Bible and then say they don't contradict, so like, if they work together, then great, but everything coming from its own seed. Nowhere do I think he said anything that says that that's not true. You know, a human does give birth to a human. We're talking about changes over time, so that seems to.
Really really do you think that that's not I can I explain it because I think maybe where the disconnect is happening is if I have a child, that child is going to be human. If you have a child, that child is going to be human. No one is expecting you to have a child that has the head of a crocodile and the body of a human. That's not how this works. But if you have a child the higher scientific community, if you go and take a
biology course, this is not how it works. And I think that that's where people a lot of times I've seen creation is pain evolution as that that is not what anyone is arguing. That is not the argument. That is a strong am position of what we're claiming. What we're saying is I might give birth to a human and Let's say that Sophia goes off and lives on Mars and joins a new colony, and I stay behind
on Earth and we're separated for a million years. Over that period of time, I will continue to have human babies, and they might have a tiny genetic change, and then their children have a tiny genetic change, and there's a tiny and then there might be a sure where there's massive global warming and we have to adapt to that, and some of us die out who are less resistant to heat, and some are better able to regulate their temperature.
And so there's these little changes that happen, and over time those changes compiling compiling, compiling, compile, And if you get to that long end of the line a million years from now, my descendants are going to look very very different than me. Now, that doesn't mean that my immediate offspring is going to be radically different, because it happens on very small time scales. Does that make sense, Well.
Yeah, that's assuming that it's all going to work out that way. Yeah.
I mean I think that we assume that because we've seen that.
Happen before, because we're able to make predictions when we talk about evolution that do turn out to be true.
Ben here for but we haven't been here for millions and millions and millions of years.
Do you believe we've been here about six thousand you.
That is what? That is what evolution says.
Now make clarify.
Millions of years.
May clarify that is indeed what I believe. Are you saying that you think we have not been here for that long? How long do you think we have been here?
I believe what the Bible says. I believe we've only been around for about six thousand years.
How do you know that the Bible is true because you're taking it on its word, but there are other holy texts from other religions.
You were one hundred percent, I'm taking it ons word.
Okay, So then there's no real point I believe the Bible or anything else, because if you're just saying that I believe these exact words as I understand them, and the Bible does never say that the earth is only six thousand years old, You're right, there doesn't have to be a contradiction between science and religion. But by saying that it's only six thousand years old, you're sort of
forcing that contradiction. There's a lot of people in the atheist community who are here because we're from backgrounds or families that said, the Bible says the Earth is six thousand years old, and then we learn even a tiny bit about science and are like, wow, most of what I was I was actively being lied to. So I would say, maybe look into that idea a little bit.
But if you're coming in to say that you're wanting to, you know, let us talk about you have this idea that's better than evolution, and it's just because you take the Bible at its word. Do you see how that's not really an argument for those of us who don't take the Bible at its word, that there's no reason for us to believe that it is true. And so you're just saying I believe in the story. Because I believe in the.
Story, I don't really know where we're supposed to go with that.
Additionally, I think it's kind of a bit ironic that you mentioned children, you know, in the comments, and that we're going after kids when the arguments that you're making aren't even arguments. And when I was a kid in the Christian Church, I would bring up really obvious flaws and like, hey, but why does the Bible have to contradict science? Why can't it be more than six thousand
years old? It really actually looks like it's not a six thousand year old earth, and the Bible never really says that.
I would ask those two grown.
Ups like you and be like really looking for an answer, and I would just be told take the Bible out its face. And that's why I'm sitting here today is because that's not a strong answer. So I'm sort of curious to.
You, Oh, smart, what are we supposed to do with this?
If there's just the Bible is the Bible, and I believe the Bible and I'm not interested in anything outside of.
It, what are you supposed to do with it? Okay, well you take you have to take the Bible by faith, and I understand that people want to question that, and okay, I get that, but without faith it is impossible to please God. And there must there is a little bit of faith, and the same thing hold on a man. Let me say, I won't take a long time. Even
with evolution. Even with evolution, you have to have a little bit of faith to believe in evolution, because there is no physical there is no one person living today that can say, oh, yeah, that's exactly how that happened. It started millions of years ago, and this evolved into this, and this evolved into that there is not one person that can tell you that it.
Was here to verify that.
So you take care, you take all that you collect this information and say, well, it's got to be this and here, let me let me get into this real quick. And I want, I might, I.
Might pause you there just because I do think that there was a quite bit said there that I think would not want to respond to real quickly.
Yeah. I want to push back first on the notion that you're you're taking the Bible on faith is equal to taking science on faith, because if I were to look at the Bible and the Biblical text tells me that fish live in trees, would you believe that simply because it's in the Bible. Or would you go out and look at the universe and look at fish and study them and study their their attributes and their lives
and see if this matches with the Bible. And if it doesn't match with the Bible, what are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the Bible or are you going to say, look, we were told to take the Bible on faith, but the Bible was wrong. So maybe there's other ways that we can confirm if something's true, because I genuinely believe that truth would stands scrutiny, and we should be able to go out and scrutinize something and see if it's true or not. It's how you can tell.
That, Amen Jesus truth, Amen, pre chilling.
Okay, okay, So then how if I'm.
The way the truth in the life that is correct?
But you're you're spoutings. You're spouting this like it's true because it's in the Bible. But how can we test that the Bible is true? How can we know that the Bible is true? Shouldn't we not be afraid to go out and look and see if it contradicts nature?
There you go, Nature itself declares that there is a guy.
But it doesn't.
It really doesn't.
But it doesn't.
The Bible says that it's accurate that the Bible says.
That it's the grasp. Okay, what do you mean? What animal have you ever seen? Yeah? How does how does nature not declare that there's a god?
How does it not that's strange, just like asking me how how do I not turn orange every day? It's like a completely nonsense question. I don't really know what to how does it? Maybe let's do these.
Are inanimate objects that all.
Right, let's go to how it does. Let's let's go to how it does, go back to Genesis, go back.
To general goodness. Okay, I feel like.
Here's another thing I've heard you guys say. Here's another thing I've heard you guys say with this thing is that, well, how could grass grow without the sun? Because you talk about the.
Day I ever talked about that, and I googled and I went.
I had to go with it a little bit, and and I looked at the Bible and the sun was created on the third day. Okay, I think was it grass? Or no, I'm sorry, grass was created on the third day. And you guys say, well, how could grass live without the sun?
Yeah, well, let me pose right there, and grass can live for up and made a positive or meet just one secred almost you're continuing, Okay, so I've meeted you for just a second because I was sort of trying to come in one being. You can find some atheist out there who says that I'm sure. I'm sure. I never have Thomas. Have you ever said just how can grass grow without the sun? Just on that out there?
I don't think I haven't. I haven't been on the show in a few years, so I don't.
YEA.
So I think that the reason why I'm like this is kind of a silly question to keep bringing to us because you heard someone say it. It'd be like, there are Christians out there who genuinely believe that yours flowed and the.
Earth is flat? Sure give it. Let's say that.
I don't think it's fair to hold you to account for something that just some Christians somewhere thinks or they really believe that, like everyone in Africa the descendant of Kine, Like, that's a real thing, some real Christians believe. But it'd be weird for me to ask you to explain that
when that's not something that you have said. I think that I'm curious too, So I'll amute you, but I really am you know, Thomas sort of explained our basic fury of evolution and of abiogenesis and how that works. Can you give me anything he said there that you found compelling or was there anything that you remember from what Thomas said, because you're sort of re asking a question that Thomas already answered, You're unmuted, say this again, I'm.
Sorry, Well hold on, I'm kind of I'm out in the wind here, So okay, well go ahead and ask me. What are you trying to tell me?
So initially, I'm saying, I don't think we need to respond to an argument that we personally have never made, because I'm sure there are Christians who believe things that you believe or sorry, but the strength.
And I'll give you. I'll give you that I taught.
Thank you.
So I'm asking because I feel like Thomas also already dealt with this pretty well in his response about evolution and abiogenesis. Is there anything that you can you know, respond to from there or have further questions on or noted?
Even just from what Thomas said?
I guess not. I guess where I wanted to go with all this was this evolution versus creation thing.
Yeah, and I see that you go to you go to any I see that. I think that the difficulty I have is that you asked a question and it was answered, and then I just said, do you have anything that you can respond to it or even remember things he said, and you kind of just said no, So what's the point in a dialogue?
Do you see my issue with that?
I can yeah, So I almost want to say, can we go ahead? And I have actually enjoyed our conversation. I'm curious if maybe that's something you could watch back and then call in again, because I feel like have a dialogue like Thomas gave you a really good answer in my opinion, and if you have questions or issues with that, I think that would really be worth exploring. But because it feels like the dialogue fell off with not listening to the answer, I'm gonna go ahead and call it.
A day on that one.
Also, I would want to add the Cliff like, I do appreciate this call, and I appreciate how how patient you've been, you know, in this conversation. Sometimes I've jumped on shows where I've just been cut off and can't talk at all. But Cliff, I've been in your shoes, and I've been in places where I've just taken the Bible one hundred percent at his word because it said so that's not critical thinking, man, That is not how we can tell like if you were born Hindu you
would believe in the Hindu God. The only way that you can tell if it's true or not is by going out and testing and exploring how does the world actually work with an open mind, looking critically at the evidence. You can go right now online. You don't have to have a paid account. You can just get chat GPT, pull it up and type in give me all of the problems and all of the flaw with Noah's ark, and just start there and read through them, click on
the links, do some research. Don't just look at answers and genesis. You can look at their rebuttals, but look at what the scientists are actually saying. And I think that'll that'll give you some idea as to why we personally don't take the Bible at its word because we started there, but we didn't end there.
Yeah, but thank you very much for calling and for your politeness, and I do really appreciate it, and I hope you call back in again.
If this thing will listen when I click the button.
Okay, the real Yeah, I think that I don't know what's your what's your take on that?
After that call, do you have a basic feeling of.
Yeah, overall, I would a very nice caller. Yeah, seemed like a nice guy. The arguments, besides the one that he wanted us to defend someone else's claim that I don't personally find the claim of like the order of things that we're creating genesis as very compelling. The only time that I find that argument compelling is with old Earth creationists that say, oh, it wasn't actually days, it
was millions of years. And then it compounds the problem because you can't have grass live millions of years without the sun, just for example. But I don't find it to be the most compelling argument to me. I find the most compelling argument the fact that the Bible makes very very clear claims about the entire Earth was covered in water. There's no evidence of that in the geological layers. It talks about the Earth being created in six thousand years,
there's no evidence for that. In fact, we have a whole ton of evidence for an old Earth. And it's like all of these little things. I think he brought up evolution, but it was a kind of a vague argument, and then it seemed like it started segueing into a bunch of other stuff, and it was that's when it went a little off the roll.
It feels like it often does, just because it will never be I remember from back when I was much more fundamentalist, or a fundamentalist at all. I'm no longer a fundamentalist Christian, just clarifying that I kind of argued the same way. It wasn't just evolution, it was also a biogenesis. It was also the effect of atheism on the world. Everything was kind of thrown in together. It
was sort of the like spaghetti at the wall. Yeah, I was gonna say, like a smoke bomb of distraction, kind of just like ha ha, like run away.
It's ash gallop. It's a gish gallop.
That is an amazing word that I have never heard.
So. A gish gallop is when you have a bunch of arguments and rather than address them one by one, you just throw like twenty arguments at someone. They might all be good arguments, but you won't know because the other person they're sitting there trying to answer this one, and then it's trying to answer this one. You see William Laine Craig do this a lot in his debates, where he'll throw out twenty different arguments. Yeah, a person
chooses three to respond to. He's like, well, you clearly you didn't respond to this one, so you must not have a response to it.
And it's just like you.
You threw every exactly. I love gish gallop. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna try to use that this week. Yeah, I think I do want to really briefly reference also the idea of us like going after kids. And one thing I would say, we're not on children's YouTube.
That's just not a thing.
If children are coming to this, they're coming to it because they're curious, because they want to watch it. If they're asking questions, it might be because we're the people answering them. I remember seeking, truly seeking people older that I thought were older and wiser than me to answer questions about the Bible, because I also believed that if I tested this.
It would hold up to scrutiny. So I was not afraid of that.
I was going to question everything, keep what is good, like Paul says, right, and yeah, it kind of kept being made into a thing where I was I was made to feel bad or ashamed because I was asking questions.
And I don't necessarily think that was the intention of older people, but they kind of kept coming back to how I had to have faith, sort of implying that I wasn't if I was asking questions, that I was pushing this too far, and that I was making myself something of an idol that I thought I knew better than God, which is something I was accused of because I would ask really what I thought were extremely obvious questions.
Yeah.
So I think that when we think about kids coming here, like, first of all, this isn't a kid's show, you know, if you're a grown up watching thinking about you know, watch with discretion.
We say swear words, I.
Talk about my boobs sometimes, so like it's not something that I would recommend to children necessarily, But I think the fact that we deal with their questions seriously and honestly and are willing to say I don't know.
I think that's why children end up here.
And by children, I mean anyone under eighteen, because in my mind, anyone under eighteen is a baby.
Also, can I just say, can I just say and that this isn't directed at Cliff because he didn't make this argument. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but can I just say, Oh my god, the hypocrisy among Christians ye to have the audacity to And again I'm getting this just from many, many, many other Christians who I've talked to you that are like, you're indoctrinating the youth? How dare you? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Right?
Now?
You have how many private schools and religious schools that are shoving the stuff down kids throats without teaching the alternate position at all whatsoever other than maybe a stramm position of it, and indoctrinating them by the millions, and now defunding things like the Department of Education trying to
get rid of it. And it's like to then, tell us that we are indoctrinating the youth simply because we are providing the world with the alternative opinion, which is actually the scientific consens his opinion that is based in evidence and grounded in reason and logic and critical thought, And like they're upset at us for simply having the
free speech to express ourselves. Is the Bible that fragile is God, that incapable and inept that he can't defend his position with facts and reason and evidence, that some call in show is gonna somehow destroy the Bible? If so it's probably not a holy book.
I love it. I mean also I love the idea of us being the sole force of like ah talk even did it. You know, they took down the Bible once and for all. But I think that what you're saying, it comes brings me back to kind of my intro
about people really think there's Christian babies. They think that like it's just so inherently evident and so true, and that they have the right to tell children that they will burn in hell if they don't believe, and then are shocked when we actually think that it's maybe better for them to live without that stuff.
Yeah, it is really interesting to.
Jump on another one. If you guys want to call in the show, there's still openings, there's slots, so the numbers on the screen pick it up. Let us know what you think. If I enraged you with something that I said, if Sophia has has radically pissed you off, then it'll because I.
Mentioned my boobs.
So we are also now accepting super chats and we may read them live on the air, So feel free to make us read things you've written, assuming they are YouTube appropriate. And if you're in the Austin area. Follow us on meetup to keep up with community events. I do live here in Austin, so you can come hang out with me. You know, we actually do really cool stuff and everyone is so neat. I am so lucky to know these folks here in Austin at the Atheist Community.
You can see what's going on at tiny dot cc slash ACA meetup. There's things like Philosophy under the Stars, which is like a little starlamp they put up, but then they talk about philosophy and oftentimes they're even joined by like a professor of philosophy. So if that's really your jam, then that would be something great for you to do. There's game nights where we just get together and we don't it's not like everything is talking about
atheism all the time. There is, you know, a bit of community here that's really cool to be a part of. There's Secular sister Head, which is like a women's group around and that's so fun, very cool. Any women identified folks more than welcome to attend. Went for a hike yesterday.
It was great.
Yeah, so hang out with us and join our weekly watch parties at the Free Thought Library, which is here on Sundays, we're live. Viewings of Talk Ethen and the Atheist Experience are back to weekly in building. Well, we're doing like showing in Okay, so it's not always like filmed here.
But yeah, so when you have local hosts, the hosts are here, but they can every week you have a get together and group of people, and.
Yeah, sometimes they'll be here.
Sometimes even the local hosts will be like, like, I have been on my couch before all these people seen my couch.
Yeah.
But also it's it's cool because hey, like if we're not on the show, we may still come in and just be around and commentating and yeah, just being together, you know, which is lovely. And then follow Talk Heathen on TikTok Talk Heathen. Yeah, TikTok is just Talk Heathen. Sorry, I'm getting all my words mixed up, and join us for our pre show lives at the ACA TikTok, which is Atheist Community of Austin. Richard who's one of our hosts and also our producer. He gives us that, you know,
does that that pre show live? Okay, I'm hearing laughter and I sense there's a super chutte on the screen, but it's so small. I can't read it, and I'm excited for it to show up on my end. Okay, maybe we'll do that here in a second. Alrighty, So with all of those announcements going on, I'm going to look at coming back to our next caller.
Alrighty, So we have Benji.
He him from Alabama, and Benji wants to talk about how pronouns are used by the new generation.
Well, that'll be interesting.
That's not what I think of when I think of religion, and not so much either.
Hey, Benji, can I tell us what you're thinking about?
Hey? Yeah, So I was watching some astises Beans videos yesterday and and this guy called in, this is bat that saint when matter one of them was on and or no, I'm sorry it was uh it was Jay Mike and uh uh secularity I saint or uh saint might have been doctor Ben but I know Jay Mike was on it. And they they the guy had mentioned uh like uh basically the pronoun stuff like and the
main thing guy thinks about. And and I've even watched a Family Guy episode where they kind of made fun of this and me, myself, I'm pretty.
Old, so like when I was in school.
Uh, well I've been in school a few times. But when I was in school, they you know, when we learned about like sets, gender orientation and stuff like that.
That's and really the.
Only ones I even heard on the video was just too but there's literally three or four different ones. Do you have sexual orientation, which is like if you're into male or female? And then you had zender, which I guess, I mean a lot of people use that in its tangibly with set, so I sence that's kind of where some of the confusion goes.
And then the the like even we did back in the.
Eighties and nineties, like we were just in a time because like you didn't want to see sets on PaperWorks and stuff male or female until later on that sens dif from zender to sets because it was it was getting confusing, and now they used zender as like this social trap, you know. And in my mind, and I'm not trying to be offensive to anybody out there, but this is just my opinion based on how stuff you know, used to be and how I view stuff in my life.
And I don't know if this is this pause I'm old or what, but like if you're born a male, you can't. I mean, you could do a sense change, right, you can change yourself into a female or whatever. But like the stuff about you know, identifying its animals and animate objects and all this drap, it's just crazy with to me.
To me, it seems like a man, hold up, hold up this, This to me seems like a massive red herring to the argument that most people in the trans community are making. And it's it's this idea that it's it's so utterly preposterous because you have this one fringe nutcase that might have identified as an attack helicopter or something, and it's just it's it's not what people are saying.
It's what people in the trans community are saying, is hey, look, things are more complicated than we thought, even just with sex, Like if you have male on one end of the spectrum and female on the other, you have a lot of variability with intersex cases where people are born with two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome, or people are born with two Y chromosomes or three x's, And so to look at this and say, hey, this pictures actually
a lot more complicated than we thought. Maybe we should handle this and approach it with compassion and say, yeah, it's a really complicated issue, and especially if you're a kid and you're dealing with something like this, rather than simply delegitimizing it in a way and saying, ah, come on, what do you think next, someone's going to be identifying
as a cow? This is absurd if instead we just approach it with you know what, like, yeah, this is a lot more complicated, And I may not be a doctor and know everything about it, but if someone tells me that, like, something's going on with them and they may look like they're male, but that's not answering everything else that's going on, Like they may have developed secondary sex characteristics of another gender, they may have a neural chemistry of the other gender, and you can see and
test these things. It's not really my place to say, but I'm gonna do my best to not just write them off and to try to just be more understanding because they go through a lot of hell with bullying and stuff as it is.
Does that kind of no, No, that's not what I was talking about. So I'm going to get into that, but that's not that separate. Yeah, So, so like if somebody is born and male hy and they have a chemical imbalance, so they have, you know, a genetic mutation that causes them to have more wide chromosomes and X chromosomes or vice versa. Why that that's different than what I was taught, But I can get in that.
Are you talking about yeah, are you talking about folks who are essentially.
Like there is no identifiable medical reason why they would be uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth. I think I get the impression that you're talking about people that.
Change or something that's not an issue for me, Like, there's circumstances, So what is.
The issue for you?
Like, if you were to just summarize it in a sentence, it seems like you have an issue with it.
Why, Well, I don't have an issue with gay or bay or any of that. My neighbors are lesbian. I've never done them for that. I don't have an issue with sensual orienta. As far as who somebody likes, I don't have an issue with. You know, if a boy wants to be a goal and does a set change, I don't care about that either.
Okay.
Uh, And really, if it's if it's genetic, if it's caused by genetics, that's one thing, and I can understand that. But the thing I was talking about is people just you know, the youngers in a way saying, oh, well, I identify as a horse.
Okay, But do you think that's common? Homo sapien, do you think that that's common? Do you think that that's something that happens often.
I've heard of it and I've seen it alongside with the LGBT. Key, Oh that's separate.
Still, where did you see that? Because I mean.
There's been there's been like videos of like if you go online, you can find some people that say, oh, well, identify as a basketball or ident an animal. You also have those seen.
Stories series, yeah, where kids have been dressing.
Up furries or whatever and going out.
Else entirely. But Benji, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that me and Sophia and everyone in the atheist community and the scientific community and the trans community would be in agreement that we also don't take people seriously who say that they identify as a basketball or what have you. Most of the time when we see stories like that, we assume that these people are trolling, or we assume that that maybe there's there's some mental illness or something
going on, or maybe it's someone. Oftentimes people on the right might take on a position that seems extreme in order to basically paint it as see, this is what the left is doing. Yeah, and oftentimes right when commentators will hone in on these stories and showcase it's it's called like the nut picking fallacy, where they'll take the most extreme examples of someone's position and.
Yeah, I think that I'm going to respond to kind of some of what you said as well real quick before we would move on. It's shocking to me when I came to let go of not only my faith but also I was a very staunch conservative for quite a while.
When I came to let that.
Go, I started to realize how often things like this really extreme case of like someone identifying I feel like the cat is the classic example, someone identifying as a cat and wanting to be treated as a cat.
How often it's just a lie.
I think that there was when people looked into that specific story. There was no specific individual upon whom it was based. This is just not really happening. Like maybe occasionally it's a middle school or a high schooler who just wants to be shocking or you know, who actually might be dealing with some mental health issues that need care.
But to say that to sort of conflate that with the trans community at large, I find that kind of degrading to the trans community because it's sort of saying that your desire to live as, say a woman, that you feel that you are, that that's sort of equivalent in any way to someone who is identifying as a whore,
Like it's really not. These are very different things, and it makes them all look like it's just some pathological issue, when in reality, these are just people who want to live in the way that feels the most accurate to themselves. I do also want to point out that when we're mentioning trans people, you know, you mentioned that they can get a surgery and become female.
That's the kind of different thing.
A lot of folks who identify as trans, they do what's called socially transition, So they may want to live as a gender that is different than the one that they were assigned at birth, but they don't necessarily always want to get operations, and those operations are also really hard to get and really expensive, and insurance typically doesn't
cover them. So there's a lot of ways to be trans and to take all of that kind of diversity, all of these very different stories and very different people, and to compact them into well, they're fine, but.
The cat girl or the guy identifying as a basketball like, that's really, I think, kind of demeaning.
And I don't get the sense you mean to be demeaning, but I think that that's how that comparison can come across.
Well, the only other thing I was going to blame up the idea, So I'm going to mention this too, because you just bought it up.
Now.
I don't take a hard stance to this. I do think it's kind of off putting as far as society goes, because again, I'm pretty old, so this stuff wouldn't be happening thirty forty years ago, and it could have been happening, but it wasn't public, so like people wouldn't go out in public and you know, say if they're a god, they wouldn't sit there and say they feel like a woman in public.
So you think that's kind of sad though, Like, isn't that sort of sad that if someone felt that way, they wouldn't have been safe to do that in published at this.
Point, I don't know if it's good or bad, because like there's been I mean, you have hate crime and stuff like that too. But also like in my mind, and I'm not a heart, I'm not a hard I don't take a hard stance to this.
But there is people out.
There that's around my age, that is, you know, in their forties, fifties, sixties and on, that looked at the world now and go, this is hell of a handbasket. I not even religious tape people that say, I'm not even talking about religion. I'm just saying like people that say, you know, if there's a boy that's born a boy and they're saying nine or ten years old, and all of a sudden, you know they Now, I will say this that I do agree with some people that say it's on the parents.
Okay, I'm going to jump in yeah, I see where you're going.
I'm going to jump in there real quick.
Many who So when we're talking about younger people who are identifying as a gender other than the ones that they were signed at birth, there's a lot of rhetoric that comes out about how children are mutilating their bodies and they're being pressured into get into getting these surgeries.
That is not that's just a lie. I mean, I'm sorry.
It sounds so dramatic to say that an entire group of people is just lying to persecute another, But that is what's happening. So there are absolute lutely children that identify as being trans and the most that most of them are ever going to do when they're below the age of eighteen is socially transitioned.
So I'm going to go to fourth grade and I want.
To be seen as a boy and experienced as a boy, and I want to use this boy name that I've selected. That's really what's happening. The only medical intervention that is in any way, it's not even common. I think the last number was about like five thousand ish people in America even being assigned. This would be hormone blockers, which are frequently used for reasons aside from gender confirmation, and there isn't really solid medical evidence that that causes any
problem whatsoever. They're often used when there are other medical issues that a kid has, and we never blink twice at using hormone blockers, but we get really upset when we're using them for trans kids. I would also point out that when we're talking about trans kids, these are some of the kids with the highest risk of suicide, and it's because the whole nation is focused on arguing about whether or not they should be allowed to exist as the gender that they feel most comfortable as.
I find that horrifying.
I also kind of want to go back and mention, you know, you're saying you're old and people weren't talking about this then, and that's.
Sort of true.
But there were absolutely trans people then. There are trans people your age. It's not even a bet I've met them. They're there, and they can talk about when they were kids, how much joy and how much comfort it would have given them to be able to live as they saw themselves, and how heartbreaking it is to watch children today try to do that and then just be made the center of these huge national debates when there's.
Not really any hurting anyone here.
And also, this isn't exclusive to America. This is not something where all of a sudden the existence of trans people popped up in the last thirty years. This is something that is true across cultures. It's true across time.
There have been skeletons and like different burials of people they go back hundreds and thousands of years that were trans There are people in different colures and different communities, they call it different things, but it's people who don't quite fit the mold of this kind of standard two gender narrative, and so to act like it's just new if it wasn't, if they weren't allowed to be open and honest about it, and they weren't allowed to talk about it at all, to me, that's kind of a
tragedy of free speech in a country that claims that we should be able to have open dialogue and discussion to just shut them down as like weird or odd or some sort of like societal reprobate simply because they're having a conversation about how something is not normal compared to what they're seeing around them, and then being shunned for it. I don't really see how, And maybe this isn't what you're saying, but you're saying it's hard to come to terms with or grasp the fact that things
have changed the way that they have. But isn't that kind of a good thing that they can talk about it now, Like we can have conversations about you know, how safe for puberty blockers? How effective are they do they bring the rights of suicide down. That's where the conversation should be handling, and instead it's you know, kids shouldn't even have the ability to like do this, or their parents shouldn't have the ability to like.
Oh well, yeah, well I'm going to jump into here, will trip. So there's a huge things y'all have said that I'm trying to hit on will trip before y'all move on one. I've talked to a lot of different age groups. I've talked to young people, I've talked to my generation. I've also talked to the older genuation. I'm playing with a whole bunch of people, and the consensus, well, not with everyone, but majority. So I've also seen even on the news, and you know, parents that get involved
with their kids and the schools. It seems like and maybe this isn't the case, but like, for example, if a ten year old.
Kid starts playing with.
A doll house, and maybe younger than that, but you get when I'm going with this. So if a ten year old kid starts playing with a doll house, right, and he in his mind, it's like, oh well, I like the doll house, so I must be a female. And it's just like, I'm sorry, give me a second.
My TV.
So that's that's where I was going with that. It's like it's up to the parents to teach their kids the difference between enough female and a male, because otherwise, and this kind of society nowadays, they might be pressured to feel like, Okay, well I like a doll house, so I must be a female.
Very different things. You can be a woman who loves playing outside, and in the past we've always just called them tomboys. It's like, oh, she likes to get dirty and play in the dirt. It doesn't suddenly mean that she thinks that she is a man. My sisters had dollhouses. They had you know, little polly pockets and stuff, and I remember as a kid opening those up and kind of playing around with them. I didn't suddenly think I was female. I thought, oh, here's another toy. That's just
how how my brain worked as a kid. There's a big difference between when someone is genuinely sincerely questioning their gender identity instead of being like, okay, why do you think that, and listening to them and hearing them out and having an open conversation and dialogue. If we just shut the conversation down with like you're wrong, that's an abomination.
We can't talk about this, well, that person's going to feel isolated, shunned, probably struggle with depression because they feel like they can't even talk to their parents about it. They're going to turn to other people that they who they can trust, and to me. I just I don't see these things as like operating in any way, shape or form the way that you've described it.
Yeah, I think I would also throw out there, yeah, finish your statement and then I and then I will respond.
Yeah, yeah, I add two more times, one more thing, just.
Because we do have to get going at some point. I'm going to give you one more thing because we do have to get going on at some point.
Is and this is the stand of a lot of people, is that there is only male or female and that's the born with both. But that's still like you have people that are born with both parts, right, but then generally there is only male or female.
So that's interesting, so something.
Yeah, so that's not always the case, and even if it were, who cares, I guess is my take? You know, you mentioned that children need to be taught like what male or female is?
What is that?
Am I doing it wrong?
Like I'm here, I'm talking well, I exist in a lot of masculine spaces.
I have tattoos. Am I not femaling?
Right?
You know?
Gender but comes really complicated as soon as we start to talk about these things, so you know, unless you can tell me if I'm doing it right or wrong.
So if you're born female, you would be considered a female right now. Even if what is a female and you want to be a male, that's different. But if you're born female with female parts and female hormone, you know what I'm saying.
I don't to be honest, so I'm going to actually let you go.
But before that, I'm going to just say real quick that we have been sort of speaking on behalf of trans people best we can, which is not usually a position that I would want to put myself in. We definitely do have like call back in when when doctor Ben is on, because doctor Ben is not only a medical professional but a transman and so can speak with more authority than I can.
But I do wanna want to bring up here, So I'm gonna drop you.
But I'm going to ask you to call back at some point because I feel like we've kind of hit what we're going to hit today, and I would I think that it would be really valuable for you to speak with some folks who are more of an expert on this than I am.
We keep talking about parts.
I'm sorry when when we're chatting and I'm sitting there at a table with you, like I I'm a sign film at birth, I'm female presenting, I identify as woman, all of these things? Are you thinking constantly about my vagina? So I see that responding a little bit with the crowd, but just this idea of his fixation on what what genitale as someone has and if they're living in a way that is aligned with their genitalia, which first of all, is not your business.
And second why you know, it's really uncomfortable to.
Imagine that when you're talking to a transperson the only thing going.
Through your head is penis or vagina.
You know, like, that's very strange, that's a weird thing to do, man. So I think that we can say that we respect folks and that we see them as fully human and that you know, we don't have an issue with folks who are trans or who identify differently, or whatever it might be. But if we're still going through that narrative, if we're still trying to parse them out in gender and peg them as male or female, try to guess what genitalia they had at birth, then
we're still not really treating them like human. We're still treating them like that's all they are. So if you can can't get over that, maybe it's not really a time for you to be parsing out what acceptable gender is.
I had a while back, I was looking at potentially doing your video on this topic, and I stayed up all night just like reading as much research as I
coult on the topic. And I went from like, oh, it'll be an easy video too, like, oh my god, this topic is complicated, and just to give you an idea, this gross simplification that it just comes down to the parts which parts, Like I mean, I mentioned briefly that you could have, you know, like Turner syndrome or Cliinfelter syndrome are different, you know, based off of your kareotypes, Like karyotype is your sex chromosomes? So are you xx or u x Y or you xxx or you xx y xxx.
Y, or you like.
The list goes on and on. But even outside of that, you can have mutations that occur on one of your sex chromosomes, so that you can be xx but you have male parts. You can be x Y and you have female parts. You can have all of everything in between. You can have male primary sex characteristics but develop female secondary sex characteristics, and vice versa. You can have so
many things in between. You can have people that neurologically like, you can actually scan the brain of your stereotypical female and the brain of your stereotypical male, and there will be certain noticeable differences. What do you do when you have someone that has a brain that seems to be a female brain inside of a male body? What do you do when they're when you know, you're like, oh,
we're just looking at the parts. And people can have a micro penis that looks like a clitterists or vice versa, a giant clitorist that looks like it's a penis, and it's miss like. The doctors look at it, and sometimes, you know, usually they're like, h male, eh, female. Sometimes they go eh, I don't know, what do you think?
And and sometimes the parents and the doctors, they make this split second decision, and sometimes they get it wrong, and sometimes the child grows up their whole life, and sometimes they don't even necessarily know until they get older, and then they they take a carrier type text and they realize, oh my god, i was xx chromosomes all along, but I've been like presenting as a male, I have a penis, I've been going to the men's locker room,
competing in men's sports, and blah blah blah. And then they realize that their whole world turns on its head. So this notion that things are just that simple, it's it's an archaic way of looking at it. And everyone says, well, the science says, doesn't have the slightest clue about how
just how complicated this is. So I don't want to speak on behalf of the whole trans community, but like just a basic one night of looking into the stuff completely rid me of this this illusion that maybe things could be explained in a super super simple manner because I'm barely scratching the surface of this.
Yeah, well, and it's interesting and I feel like a little bit telling when I think about the idea of like if we're presenting. It is so clear that females slash women which we are going to conflate, are this way, and male slash men, which.
We're going to conflate are this way.
Then you couldn't tell me anything about if I'm womening right, Like that's he kind of reverted to, oh, you know what I mean?
Like I really don't, did you? And I shaved my neck this morning? Like, I, you know, is that womaning right? Should I just come?
I mean, there's so many little bits that we do to express our gender all.
That you expected me to somehow know that. I'm just like, I don't know.
Maybe you're like I could see from your upper lip hair that's necessary, but you know, it's just it's one of those things like I spent a lot of time doing gender affirming actions for myself and I.
And also what is what is seen as female or male just in terms of how what clothes we wear, how we wear our hairs, Like throughout history, there have been times when men wore their hair long, when men wore kilts, when men wore skirts or dresses or togas or robes or whatever you want to call them, like these this notion of like Oh, that's a man in a dress, And I'm like, no, actually that's a priest. He's wearing a rope.
You know.
Like, there's there's so many different things that are societal that we place on society of Like pink is a girl's color, why not in every culture. There's plenty of cultures where people wear pink that are men. Yeah.
I think that the fundamental thing that we come down to is not that it's obvious that there are two categories of gender sex.
However these folks want to put it.
It's that they think there should be and that there should be these prescribed roles and that we would somehow be better off if we lived into them. And I think that's based on a desire for power, a desire not to hear people.
Who disagree with you speak.
And I don't think any good comes of deciding that people need to fit into neatly defined categories.
And also, no one within science is denying the existence of male and female. No one is saying that there aren't two sexes, because there are. There are two sexes, but sex and gender gender is where we try to say, Okay, it's more nuanced, it's more complicated. Yes, you have two sexes,
you have intersex cases. But then how everything is interpreted and presented and how we make sense of all of it, Like, we've got to start having a conversation that incorporates the complexity of this stuff, or else you end up with an incredibly shallow narrative that doesn't really help anyone.
Yeah.
I don won't change anybody either.
Trans people have always existed, and gender and unconfirmed people have always existed. So yeah, I would say that if you are accusing someone of denying science and reality, then also say that folks didn't exist who were a trans, jenner nonconforming before.
You're just wrong.
But on that note, well, first we have to do the top five patrons.
Oh and then we'll get to that our next call.
Yes, so top five patrons we have if you felt like scrolling on down, can you read the first one?
I'll oh, I'm here, great.
All right, So the top five patrons go oops.
All Singularity, Dingleberry, Jackson, Calevy Helvetti.
Yeah, you got it, Like run into that one sometimes.
Brian zoop k zoop key, zup key.
I'm not sure about that one.
Brian, I would say zoop key, but I'm not sure that one, will have to ask Brian.
Z Ja Carlton, and you want to do the honorable mentions?
Sure, honorable mention to Mark Lagusker. Did you give me that one? Because it's hard to say.
I had already hogged five and I figure no, I love it.
Yeah, So thank you for everyone who gives on the patron. If you want to have your name read on air, then please consider supporting us a tiny dot cc slash patreon t that's tiny dot cc slash patreon th. 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 look at the host, than join our patreon. Today we talk about all sorts of stuff too, So it can.
Be family, it can be atheism, it can be all whatever.
I think we've talked about, like recipes on there before. There's just so many different things, and I think we will be on today.
So yeah, so you can just come.
And just talk to us in a much more informal environment, just.
Hang out with us exactly.
I don't know if that's a selling pointers.
I know after my announcements about my facial air. People are gonna be like, she is a bit much so, and it's true. Okay, so we can go on to our next caller. We have Theresa. She her from Wisconsin, who wants to talk about my journey to atheism.
But yes, sorry, now you're right.
You're right about her journey to atheism and how they cannot overcome past programming from growing up Catholic.
So Teresa, tell us your thoughts.
Hi, how are you kids doing well?
I'm a kid.
I love it. Yeah, we're doing pretty well. How are you?
I'm really good. I'm going to go.
I support a couple of comedians on Patreon, and I'm going to go right after we're done.
I'm going to go and and throw some support at you guys.
To the audience is a body for you. I don't know if you can hear.
That is adorable, awesome good.
So anyway, Yes, I was raised Catholic in to be honest, I never I could never quote unquote get into it, and at sixteen I was no longer required to go and I never did again. However, I was certainly programmed as a child to believe that Christ is and still is the Savior and that our religion is the religion, and everybody else is in the world is wrong and they're going to hell. I'm not a real scientific person, but as I developed into an adult in over time,
slowly I have been sailing toward atheism. I have been listening to my favorite atheist, Chris Hitchens. God, you know, I was just gonna say, God bless me.
I got to love that.
Yeah, funny, But you see that's kind of just proof of my programming right there, just much as that.
But my question is what can I continue to do because I think I am an atheist, but then things get in my way, like, for example, on my deathbed, I'm pretty sure I will be saying to myself, oh Jesus, I'm sorry if I was wrong this whole time. And then secondary I think that, you know, science answers many many.
Of my questions, but not all of my questions.
And then I bounced back to, well, okay, maybe we have to talk about divine presences and I'll just shoot that, you guys said. I guess my question is how do I get to become an atheist? Is it okay to just be an agnostic work, which is what I think I am.
Right now.
And also the biggest thing for me is again, where you were born in the world is going to determine probably ninety five percent of the time, what religion you're going to be.
And that is a kind of my number one issue is.
Just because you were born a Christian, suddenly you are the one going to have it now all your Islamic millions and millions of Islamic.
People are going to Hell or are not going. So I'll leave it there for your comments.
Do you mind if we start with the fear of Hell?
Yes? Yeah, go ahead.
Did you know that the Jews didn't believe in Hell in the same sense that Christians do.
Isn't that a construct that they invented?
See? I thought that as well. But then if you go and you talk to actual rabbis and you talk to people who are experts in the rabbinic literature, you know, old Testament scholars, Biblical critics, they'll universally tell you that the notion of Hell is very, very very different among Jews. And as this religion developed over time, it got added on to So initially you had this more of a concept of kind of an underworld, So you have discussions of Shiel Abraham talks about, you know, this is going
to send me down to Shield. I think Abraham or Jacob, one of the patriarchs, talks about how I'm going to go down to Shield in worrying. It's basically like you're going to give your dad a heart attack and send me to an early grave. But it was this idea of like an underworld where everyone goes. There were other
notions of hell. There's different mentions of it, but you see this evolution over time where it's only by the time you get to like Revelation, where you have this notion of just this never ending fire, and even then a lot of the interpretations have been questioned. But this
idea was not original. And over time, even even post Bible, post Biblical ideas of hell, you have books like Dante's Inferno that are talking about the different layers of punishment and this this horrible torture for this sin and this one for this sin. None of that, none of that
is original. This has been a crude on but it has sticking power because clearly, if it's an idea that you're indoctrinated with as you're demonstrating, it's very hard to let go of these fears when it's that powerful of a form of imagery that's given to you as a kid, that like, if you don't believe this, you're gonna burn forever.
But when you realize how it's evolved over time and that this idea is one hundred percent man made, it kind of would you say that for you at least, maybe that would help to lose some of the fear of it.
Yeah, well absolutely, because that is what I fear is. Oh, yes, it is all that I was programmed to believe.
And yeah, that does help.
Again, everything, everything on.
This earth is about education, and the more we know, yeah, I think that.
Yeah, no, totally.
And I feel like that was just such a beautiful way of stating it too, just being like, hey, like we made this up for me, it was very hard to leave behind.
The fear of hell.
And I've talked about this before, just because you know, what if you still have that what if feeling in your head, Like I can say that the Bible was not even constructed the way I'd been told it was that there were many documents that you know, just as easily could have made it that none of these were meant to be read as anything other than sort of legendary and I can know all of these things, but there's still that like feeling of what if.
And for me learning about the history was really helpful.
Also seeing someone actually, you know there when they talk about outside of the gates where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, that's a physical place that you can go see. And there's muched a video of someone walking around that place, and it's it's a park.
It's just sort of green and just kind of there. I feel like as you're talk yeah, I'm worse with words.
I feel like you're the more academic of the two of us.
Is it is an actual location in Israel?
Yeah, And so just being able to watch someone walk there was really comforting to me to.
Just be like, yeah, this is really all that ever was. And of course, you know, for me it was hard to give a peal.
For you, it sounds hard to kind of move past that because we were indoctrinated with it when we were children. So what a powerful tool for the church to use to keep people in line. Right, Like, when we think about the history of the church, particularly where I am Catholic, we think about things like selling indulgences. Right, I can do whatever I want provided that I pay a certain amount to the local priests or bishop or whatever, and
they will let me. You know, my sins are covered if I just pay the right mount Like, it was a great way to shore up power in the church, to make us believe that we're unworthy, we are sinful, we need intercession, and if we don't.
Then burn and fire for eternity. Like.
It was so useful for them that. Yeah, I mean, and we are living proof as to why that was. But thinking about the political reality of it in the Middle Ages, thinking about you know, the literature like the Dante's Inferno or the Exorcist that has come to really form our vision of hell and evil demons and spirits, it helped for me quite a bit.
Absolutely.
Yeah, excuse me.
Have you.
Have you guys heard of a guy named Dan mccollin.
Yes, definitely have.
I actually just did. I just did an interview with Dan McClellan. I'll be dropping it on my channel fairly soon.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I feel like Dan McClellan has been really helpful for me, even though I know he is still a religious person. Just in talking about what is actually in the Bible. And I feel like I find that really helpful too.
I got to say, there's something you were about to say about it though, Oh that is his.
Data over dogma has really helped me.
And again I don't understand he's he's somehow he is a very devout Mormon. But when you lift just talk about what the Bible and the translations, he's a he's a religious and a biblical scholar, highly educated on what the Bible does and does not say. I listened to him a lot because it's clearing up questions about.
The Bible that that I have have had in the past.
And he said, oh, and he's telling you, Okay, this is what they meant, what the apostles meant when they said Tom, what they really meant. And he talks about the timing, and he talks about, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sixty years old.
And I just thought the cultural context, yeah, which is so which is so valuable. And I think that maybe it's a good demonstration and of the fact that I don't feel my personal goal anyway is to make everyone an atheist. But I think if there were more theists who really looked, you know, data over dogma, and who really cared about finding how to interpret things as accurately as possible, how they may be limiting other people with their beliefs that are unjustified if they were really asking
those questions. I think the world would be a better place if there were more theists who really wanted to get into that I do want to address really quickly.
You mentioned the idea of.
Still having really big questions that things like atheism can't answer, and I sort of wanted to mention, like, first of all, empathize with that too, just that yeah, there's still a lot of questions, and I think being able to say I don't know is one of the only ways I was able to come out of religion, because the idea is, I feel like, if you're in, particularly as I was, a more fundamentalist space, if as soon as you say I don't know, someone will say, see God, you know,
just there must be He must be there. Yeah. And so I think for me embracing the fact that that I don't know and that's okay, that science is not meant to be an all you know, answering system. I guess like it's about exploration, it's not about finding the one answer.
At the same time, it is the best tool that we have to try to figure out how the world works, because what is the alternative prayer revelation? Having you know, a vision or something like you can compare that against the world and see how the world operates and test it and try it in order to not have to rely on just taking everything on belief, because that gets us in a lot of sticky situations when we don't rely on the evidence and we don't rely on the data.
I am curious when you were mentioning how You're like, well, what if I get to the end of my life? And I'm just like, well, what if I got it wrong? Are you familiar with Pascal's Wager? Teresa? It's fresh meet Pascal's Wager. It was a proposition put forth by Blaze Pascal I believe in the late eighteen hundreds, and it goes like, if you believe in God and you're right, well you get eternal life. If you believe in God
and you're wrong, then nothing happens. There's no consequences. If you don't believe in God and you're right, then okay, like you're right, but who really cares? Is not, there's not as much at stake. But if you're wrong, you burn in hell for all eternity because you don't believe right. So it's proposed as a mathematical proposition for why you
should believe in God. And this is something that I think almost everyone who leaves the faith wrestles with, and that they'll even if they no longer believe, oftentimes they'll opt for the God as an insurance policy. But I think that there's a few there's a few fundamental problems with it, the first being that what if what if you chose the wrong God? What if you were born into Christianity and of the millions and millions and millions
of other religious beliefs that have existed throughout history. If you chose wrong and the other God was a jealous God and he's vindictive, maybe he would burn you for all eternity heaven, and you're playing against astronomically tiny odds there.
The other option is what if God is not vindictive and he exists or she exists, or it exists, and this deity is actually forgiving, but would be more understanding of the I don't know the honest searchings of an agnostic as opposed to the arrogant know it all assertions of a proud atheist following the wrong deity. And I think you look at that, and then you also look at like, if God is all loving and all kind and actually cares about us and is omnipresent, which those
are a lot of big assertions. But assuming that all of that is the case, then hell would go against that God's very nature. Condemning people for an eternal punishment for a finite life of sin. It is not justice, it's not kindness, it's not love, it's not mercy. So you start looking at all of these problems that take place within Pascal's wager and you're like, oh, I've been
doing the calculation all wrong, you know. And if, on the other hand, let's say that you're an atheist and it's out that you're right and that no one really knows because no one can know, and there's millions of deities that a lot of them there they go against Like the Bible, for example, it has historical inaccuracies, it has internal contradictions, it has in terms like failed prophecies,
it has scientific errors. It has so many different issues with it to where I can say with one hundred percent confidence that the God of the Bible is not true, it is not real, it does not exist. I cannot say with absolute confidence that nothing started it, that there was no deity. So I'm kind of, I guess agnostic
on that front. But I live my life in such a way where like, I do my best to be kind to other people because that's the kind of world I want to live in, and I just if I'm wrong and I die at the end of my life. And assuming that the Creator wasn't just an apatheistic deity that just kind of does its own thing and doesn't give a crap about us because we're just like mold growing on the side of bread and some planet that
he doesn't even know about. Assuming that all of these things happen, then I think that that would see the sincerity with which I live my life and judgement accordingly.
Let me let me respond to what you just said, because that is very much where I'm at in my life right now. I retired five years ago, and that enabled me to do what I feel is in my heart and soul, and that's wherever I see my help is needed locally, I act on it. I do a lot of volunteering. A friend of mine, who is an atheist, she said, asked her, what do you think the meaning of life is, Tess, And she says, well, that's easy.
It's to love and help each other. And I couldn't find a better example of my reason for being on the earth, which I consider. Look, we're on this tiny speck of dust in an infinite.
Universe, and isn't this enough? I mean, yes, we've got some on this earth.
You know, we have serious problems. We are we are, we are very broken, but we.
Are also not very broken in many ways.
And isn't it enough just to be on this beautiful planet and to love and help each other and to be good stewards stewards of it for generations to come.
Wow, what a wonderful, concise way. The audience is a plotting you.
I don't know if you can hear that, but I think it's important that you know that was lovely. I really have anything else to say about that other than like, that was wonderful. And I look forward to the pull out little YouTube video of you saying those things, because I think that for me where I'm at right now, I agree that's enough.
And that's hard enough too.
To love the people that you encounter and to always be looking for ways to help. That's already hard because we are limited. And so yeah, I think that that is enough, and I'm really happy that there's people like you doing that.
And also fire.
So in my heart, I'm gonna squeeze every last hand shout of this life. I there's time to waste. We must live each and every day to the fullest possible because we're expiring, and we need to hand.
Off what we know and what we love to those behind us. That's our jobs. That's how I see my job in my life.
I love that I might let you go because I do want to get into this very last call, but I still appreciate you calling.
Yeah, yeah, thank you.
I love what you said at the end there. And I love this idea that because life is short, it increases the value of it, it doesn't decrease it. Because it's rare, it's special. You got to seize the moment, make the most of it, and treat other people in a way where it's like, if this person only has this one life and they're suffering and they're going through hell, shouldn't I be more compassionate and loving and kind towards them to make that life a little bit more tolerable. Yeah yeah, I.
Also, you know, it's funny.
Sorry, this isn't aside, but I realized that we sometimes say on this show like, hey, like, I'm not gonna let you preach, I'm just going to make your point all this, and I'm like, I'll just let Teresa preach all day.
That's fine. I'm okay with that.
But I did want to get to this last call from D, who has called it and fairly often D they them from Iowa, because this is something that we've discussed so much on the show today. I wanted to get D's perspective. They say that they're willing to share about their true perspective of how gender ambiguity affects a child.
So, hey, D, we don't have.
A ton of time left, but I wanted to get you on here to tell us what your thoughts are on that.
Thank you, Sophie, thank you Holy kool Aid. I don't know which first name is, but nice to meet you. So yeah, I was introduced very early to the idea that these sexes and genders may not be as cut and dried as possible. Now put this in perspective. I'm sixty one years old. My first introduction was in seventh grade science class in a section about genetics, and the text talked about sex testing in professional sports and in the Olympics and stuff because they want to make sure.
They wanted to make sure that an athlete was a quote unquote pure male or pure female and not have any genetic advantages. And I, by that time, I had already been catching unspoken cues about my gender identity. I was a big, rough and tumble tomboy. But when and my parents, surprisingly they did not insist on only buying me gender appropriate toys. I got a lot of tomboy toys and stuff. But as I approached my preteens, I started feeling pressure to not be a tomboy anymore and
to act more girly and feminine. Add to that, when I was six years old, I found my baby book that mom had started for me, and I read the very first words my dad said when I was born, and what he said was it was supposed to be a boy.
Oh my god.
So from my mom I felt From my mom, I felt a pressure to be more feminine, and from my dad. I felt kind of a disappointment, and when I found that baby book, I started trying to engage with him. I wanted to go hunting, but I was really squeamish. I wanted to go camping, and we did go camping. At times. There was just a lot of nonverbal messaging clashing with you know, my feelings about myself and if
I was more than just a tomboy. And when I saw that, and when I started learning about that genetic segment in science class, I remember one day thinking to myself, when I get old enough, I need to have some genetic testing done.
Now.
For various reasons I went through in my late twenties, I allowed myself. I identified as a lesbian and identified that way all the way up until last year. And I think it's very significant that, you know, my real acceptance of my thoughts about religion coalescing into a more or less atheistic outlook also freed me to accept what I felt back at twelve and thirteen years old, I
am non binary. I like, go ahead and expressed to you the I can't express to this fellow that called two things how much I feel Number one big release and number two whether or not you have an issue with it. Oh sorry guy, last week I gave away my last fuck.
I don't know if you can hear that.
The audience is audience is really involved today and they were applauding that as well.
And I think by this point I still give focks, but I charge for them.
Oh that's good.
I think something I want to pull out of your story too, is that nobody told you that it was cool to be.
Gender non conforming, right like that.
I think oftentimes how we have this discussion now, it's almost like people talk about the social contagion of it, of being gender non conforming or being trans, or this idea that it will only occur to you that you're gender non conforming if someone in a position of authority tell you that that's an option.
It's so fundamentally untrue.
And you know, you're mentioning that you're a little older, just like the caller earlier was saying, well, back in my day, no one did that, really, And it's like, yeah, but it doesn't mean people weren't there. And I always appreciate your calls so much, and I appreciate you calling and giving us that perspective.
After speaking with that caller.
I appreciate, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much. Nice to speak to you again, Sophia, and nice to meet you Holy kool aid. And Thomas appreciated your Okay, Tomas, I know it's.
Not on the screen, but my name's Thomas, and that's nice to meet you.
Yeah.
So we always we always love love d round here because they always come in with with lovely, interesting things to say and a perspective that we don't always hear. So before we conclude, there are two super chats that we neglected to read. So would you feel inspired to go ahead and at least take that first one?
Yes, I'll do. Miranda Rinsberger has been a member for one year. Thank you. Miranda gave a ten dollars super chat that says, thank you ACA for saving the children, keep up the good work.
I love that so much.
I yeah, for so many reasons, but well said Miranda, and I appreciate it so much. All right, And superchat number two, you want to tackle that one?
Yeah?
Benji says that sex and gender are not binary, both are spectral, also obligatory. Theians, other can't slash, other can identify with animals. Spirituality, psychologically or sorry, spiritually psychologically typically not as animals. So furries just like anthros. So I think they're saying that people who, first of all, I don't know enough about furries and furry what do you call it? Furry lore? Yeah, where it's like I like, I think they're saying that they identify with the animals.
Yeah, so they find some connection with Like say, they're not saying that they are a fox.
Yeah, you find some connection with it.
And then furry's just like anths would be like anthempromorphised animals that they like prefer ones that will have more humanoid features.
Maybe that would be my guess.
Admittedly, I do want to underscore and thank you Nero for the ten dollars that was from Nero. I do want to underscore how ill equipped I am when it comes to discussing some of these things, and so I definitely did my best. But if there are things that we missed, please put them in the comments, because I do want to know if there's stuff that I said that was not as accurate as I was trying to be. So, but yeah, I do appreciate that that clarification from Nero very much.
Yeah.
On that note, the prompt for this week for the question of the Week is finish the joke three wise men walk into a stable reply in the comments and tune in at the beginning of next week's episode to hear the top three answers.
And how can people find you? You're kind of a big deal.
Yeah, if you guys are interested in my work, I have a channel called Holy kool Aid. You can go check out my work there. I actually did a whole video on Pascal's Wager, which based off of the conversation we've had. People might be interested in checking it out.
Yeah, I love that so much. And thank you to the live audience that we were here we had here today. I appreciate them being here. It's dark.
I prohaps there's more people to the sides as well. There's but yet. So we love having folks come down and hang out so much. It's wonderful. Definitely.
You know, check out the atheist community meet up here in Austin.
And now we send love rings. I don't know if you remember chucking then we do love rings? Okay, I oh are we doing them? From the audience during loverings system is that?
Oh yay?
Everyone does some loverings. We're supposed to appear. Our love magic is there, whether or not you can see it. Just have faith. So there's that and then uh so, oh hey, there they are. It was delayed. Our magic was delayed. See I told you to have faith. There was.
There is the So feel you know, join the Atheist Community Discord, which is tiny dot cc slash a c D discord. And if you don't believe, this is your community and we appreciate you being here.
If you do believe, we don't hate you.
And if you don't believe, we just think you're wrong.
We'll say we're just not convinced by it. One, half a dozen of the other. You know, we got there, We got there high five.
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 nine nine nine two four two, or connect to the show online at tiny dot cc slash call tw