well I uh, actually go to church here in austin and uh...
There has been a bit of a discussion about your show at my church.
and um... If, when you were at church, if there were a show like your show
what would you have thought about it, do you think?
Concerned about the effect that it might be having on people. I mean my parents
think that i'm working for satan leading people to hell
So you know I can kind of use their their assessment as a barometer.
And I would have been concerned for the souls of the individuals on the show.
you know, for fear that they would be lost to hell, as well.
Well, that's just a perfect answer. Uh, my church believes that heaven and hell are real places.
and uh...(chuckle)
...and guess which one you're going to if you keep this up?
You See, here we go. Why? Why do you want to be our enemy?
Why do you, on purpose, choose to think bad things about us?
What's wrong with you?
(All three speak at once)
The bible is...Nevermind the frickn' bible.
But the...the...Do you want to be a person that gets along well with others are not?
Or do you want to partition yourself off into some little subgroup where if people are not in that
group with you, then they are bad?
What's wrong with you? What...what...Why, why is this appealing?
You want... You want to believe that me and Matt, we not hurting anybody. But just
stating our opinion on TV, that we deserve to be tortured forever?
That's what you want? Cut it out.
Relax
We are a new testiment church.
and the book is pretty clear about...
Well there's your mistake.
what, why... OK I, I understand your position.
I understand that you believe this and you believe it because the bible says so.
Why should anybody else believe it?
(Silence)
I mean...
Well...That is why I called really. Is to, to defend the faith.
And the bible says I should defend the faith.
I, I, I, I understand that, you know first...
First Peter three fifteen
We are on the same page there. I understand what the book says.
What I asked is why anybody else should believe it.
The reason that i'm no longer a christian is because I finally came to the understanding
that my beliefs were without rational justification...
...and without evidentiary support.
And uh... I'll go a step further. Even if the bible were true...
even if it were, and I don't for a second think it is - as nobody has yet been able to come
close to demonstrating that it's true.
um... that still does not put one in a position
where they are worshiping out of anything but fear
of a monster
that is grotesque and wants to punish people for its own problems.
Now setting aside all that why should anybody
believe what you believe?
there are a million different reasons
Give us your best one. Yeah, just...just give us your best one.
Christianity is the only way to go. Sure. What's the best reason?
(Caller takes deep breath) well um...
it, it sorta... What, what exactly um...
what exactly am I trying... trying to demonstrate here? Just that um...
Why are you a christian? What's the main reason why YOU are a christian?
(Sigh) well um...
There's a lot of evidence that the bible was divinely inspired.
Such as?
Such... Yeah.
There is prophesy...
No, no, no. Such as, what uh...
What is, where is... Give us a piece of evidence that shows that the bible is divinely inspired.
OK. It um...The bible said things about
about... about um...
about nature that uh... weren't widely known at the time.
How do you know? and and give me an example, first of all.
Well...
because we're talking about...
I'll give an example
talking about...
karm.org
Oh no, no, no. First of all, Matt Slick called in. uh...
The nonsence on karm.org has been refuted I don't know how many times.
But we're talking about a book, that if you take it
...do you think the world is six to ten thousand years old?
well um... (big breath) There's a lot of... interpretation...
that's an easy "yes or no" question. Do you think the world
is closer to six to ten thousand years old
or closer to three point five billion years old?
well um...
I...I guess if you....
if you... um...
If you take it literally, yeah the world is uh... closer to six to ten thousand years old.
Matt is asking specifically what YOU believe.
What we are trying to get at is the main reason why you are a christian,
and you are dancing all around. Why can't you tell us?
if you can listen, if you listen back to the way you just answered...
or tried to answer... actually, tried to avoid answering, that last question
all I was asking is what do you think, and we were going to go from there. But I'm happy enough
with your answer that a literal view would make it six to ten thousand years old.
So clearly, either you think it's six to ten thousand years old or you are
not completely a literalist
but irrespective of what your position is
do you at least acknowledge that all of the scientific evidence
points to an earth that is vastly older than six to ten thousand years old?
Yeah, I am aware of that.
OK so how do you reconcile...
It doesn't prove there is no god though.
You're right. You're right. Did I say it did? I'm not saying
that that proves there is no god. What i'm saying is
here's something we've learned about the universe
and it doesn't match with your literal view of the bible. Now, there's a conflict there
and we need to resolve it. Some people resolve it in favor of the bible...
saying the bible is absolutely right,
and ignore whatever actual evidence is presented.
uh... I find that to be patently absurd because
it turns christianity into a self-contradictory proposition
which is...
and by the way, so does the entire idea of a revelation in the new testament.
because your position, to the extent that I understand it cuz I haven't got
a kind of a straight answer yet
is one where there is a god who has an important
message for mankind
and somehow
he only reveals it
to certain individuals
who then write this down and thousands of years after this initial revelation
we have to rely on copies and copies of translations of copies by anonymous authors with no originals
and the textual testimony
to a miracle, for example the loafs and fishes
there's no amount of reports
anecdotal, testimonial reports, that could be sufficient to justify believing
that this event, actually happened, as reported.
No amount.
And anything that would qualify as a god would clearly understand this.
And if it wanted to convey this information to people in a way that was believable
it would not be relying on text to do so.
And this, for me, is the nail on the coffin for christianity.
The...the god...
the god that christians believe in is amazingly stupid, if it wants
to actually achieve its goal of spreading this information to humanity,
by relying on text.
By relying on languages that die off. By relying on anecdotal testimony.
That is not a pathway to truth.
And anything that would qualify for god should know this. Which means
either that god doesn't exist or doesn't care enough about
those people who understand the nature of evidence
to actually presented it. Now, which of those possibilities do you think is is accurate?
I think you...
You do need faith to believe it.
Sure. But why would you believe anything on faith?
Faith is not a pathway to truth.
every... every religion has some sort of faith. People take things on...
You know if faith is your pathway, then you can't distinguish between
Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, or any of these others.
How... how is it that you use reason as a path to the truth
in every endeavor of your life
but then when it comes to the ultimate truth, the most important truth,
you're saying that faith is required?
and how does that reflect on a god who supposedly exists and wants you to have this information?
What kind of god require faith instead of evidence?
Well, I think that you probably have faith about a lot of things too.
Like what? I don't have... I have reasonable expectations based on evidence.
I have trust that has been earned. I will grant trust tentatively.
I don't have faith.
Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence.
and indeed if you come up with something that I believe that I don't have evidence for...
guess what I'll do? I'll stop believing it.
That's the nature of a rational mind. That is the goal. My only goal was
to be the best christian I could be
and represent it to people who didn't believe.
And what I found was, because I actually cared about whether not my beliefs were true
rather than whether they felt good, was that my beliefs were not justified.
Try as I might.
And pray as hard as I could.
No answer comes.
No evidence is forthcoming.
And when I talk to people about this
the only answer they ever offer is the one you did. Which is, "You just gotta have faith."
Well sorry,
I don't. And I'm not sorry that I don't.
I'm sorry for others that they think that, that I should have.
Because faith is not a virtue.
Faith is gulibility.
It's evidence that determines whether or not your perception of reality
is reasonable and in conjunction with the world as it is.
well I think church gives a lot of people uh...some
community and some values.
Sure. But that has nothing to do with the truth
of the supernatural claims.
Church... Religions and churches
have tons and tons of benefits for the "in" group
Some of them even have benefits for some out groups. With the, you know, feeding the homeless.
Although, I really wish,
as many of the atheist do, we have the atheists helping the homeless group in Austin
where we will actually help the homeless without making them sit through a sermon first.
uh...
You know. it's not like we are holding their sandwich ransom
in the name of jesus.
You can do... There's no good thing that a church or religion does
that cannot be achieved by purely secular means.
and there's no benefit, positive benefit, to churches and religions,
that necessarily demonstrates the truth of their supernatural claims.
But there, but there is, this is my personal hobby horse today, there is a cost
to deciding that you're gonna take in
uh... in particular christianity on faith and that is that when you run into folks like
us, who don't believe,
you are compelled, because you've decided to believe christianity you are compelled to think
all kinds of horrific things about us.
and it... and, and then tell us
uh... or come at us with these threats of eternal torment
uh...which just
draws an,
it draws an insurmountable line between us. We, we cannot be um... we cannot be friends
because of what you would have decided to take on faith.
That's the cost.
Yet outside of that, that divisive cost
uh... plays out not only on the previous caller
who had to give up his job because of
good intentioned christians, but I have a fiance sitting in the room
uh... who is essentially a estranged from a good portion of her family,
who consider me to be of the devil.
I may not be a perfect person. Far from it.
But I'm generally a good person and a caring person
and I do whatever I can to live the best life I can.
I certainly am not uh... well, I guess if I was the devil, this is exactly what
he would say. uh... so who knows?
uh... but the absurdity of the divisive nature
of christianity in particular, and by the way i'm an atheist with regard to all gods,
uh... but
but since you're kind of representing christianity
it just...
I mean it breaks my heart. People who actually understand what love is
People who actually understand what
what morality is, to people who actually understand reality
it is
almost unbearable
to watch the people that you love
be so
absolutely duped
into a divisive, hateful religion,
that they think is not divisive. They think it's inclusive and they think it's
positive.
It just kills me.
It's one of the reasons that I do this.
because on a for twenty five-plus years
I believed this stuff.
And I'm so happy
so happy
that I no longer think that my former roommate is destined for hell
i'm so happy, that despite the fact that my relationship with my parents,
even though the nature of it has changed,
I don't have to worry about them.
The division is entirely one-sided.
I didn't end relationships when I became an atheist.
Christians ended those relationships. And it was because
their particular religion
cannot tolerate...
I, I had letters from people
who said we can no longer associate with you
you are of the devil.
it's possible that they are correct.
It's possible.
I don't know, I don't know under what circumstances,
but the only way you could demonstrate that
is with reason and evidence not faith.
and I don't know how we can fix a world
where people have been so convinced that they are doing the right thing
out of compassion and love
and trying to help people
when it is absolute poison.
When it is absolutely destructive.
I wish everybody could go through what I did
so they could have a... a proper understanding
of wow!
How the heck could I have believed to those things that I believed.
And how much better life is
when you're gonna deal with reality on realities terms
and I know that we did give you use a lot opportunity to
to express your views but every time I asked, I got kind of a dance. I'm happy to have
you call back in, but if you're a whole position
the foundation of your beliefs is necessarily dependent upon faith,
we have nothing to talk about.
I don't think that faith is a good thing
until you can demonstrate that faith is a good thing
how could you possibly convince somebody? And by the way, how do you go about demonstrating that faith is a good thing
without evidence?
It all comes back to reason and evidence.
I think he's gone again. OK.
George Carlin - I have always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from humpty dumpty. To all the king's horses
and all the king's men who couldn't put humpty-dumpty back together again. That's because there is
no humpty dumpty and there is no god.
Not one, never was. No god.