Stephen in Canada
Hello
Okay so um
And this is gonna be interesting.
I don't have a question today. I just wanted to have your opinion
So
I watch a lot of debates on atheism, and you know theists
And evolution and all that stuff and it always comes back to
religion and the Bible and Jesus
How about just you know believing that there's something out there
Call it God, if that's what you want, but leave religion out of it
Well, I mean deism is a thing. I just don't think there's any reason to believe in the deist God either
So are you a deist?
That's a good question, I never actually thought about that. I'm not even aware of the term
A deist is basically somebody who believes that there was a God who set the universe in motion
But has been absentee and doesn't meddle in there since the creation
Which is I guess a perfectly respectable position as much as any theistic belief is
But we don't believe that either
Okay, yeah exactly
All right
So
Well, ha ha, I thought you guys were gonna elaborate on that a little more, but that's fine
Well, I mean, what do you want us to agree with?
No, no, it's not actually, it's not agreeing or not agreeing. It's just that
I watched the show a few times, and we really get people who call
and talk about you know
not talking about the Bible because it seems like it's always a question of
Being an atheist or being religious
Okay.
Well I mean part of the reason we talk about the Bible so much is that Christians outnumber any other
Religious group you know by a longshot
In the U.S. at least and so that's primarily where you know we get our calls is you know
Primarily, North America, I would say. Um..
Cause you see the..... sorry.
No, go ahead.
The position that I'm in I'm often debating against
atheists, and also debating against Christians
Okay
Because we just don't agree
I don't believe in evolution. I've studied evolution quite a bit and scientifically it just does not work.
What do you mean by studying quite a bit? Have you taken any formal biology classes on the subject?
Self-taught
Okay, so you mean you read stuff on the internet
No, I went to, well, whichever
We don't have to get into that but I mean
You brought it up.
Well basically, but the thing is I mean
Evolution is a completely non-controversial topic
For scientist's. It's a very controversial political topic for a lot of American's, but.
There's a lot of scientists out there who don't believe in evolution because we have so little scientific proof out there.
No, no, there really aren't. And I mean if you go to someplace like the Discovery Institute
And you know they're gonna tell you oh look at all these scientist's who don't -
yea, if you stay in the main-stream you're gonna find everybody that agrees with evolution, of course, because
Because it's settled scientific facts
Because it's a fringy conspiracy theory to be in a scientific field and also say evolution didn't happen
yeah, I don't want to get into the subject of evolution because we could go on for hours, and we're never gonna -
But you brought it up.
I just said that I don't believe in evolution, that's why I don't agree necessarily with Christians, uh, with atheists.
You're saying that we should agree on stuff, but you're bringing in these fringy views into the conversational by yourself that have no merit
No, I'm just saying that, I'm just giving you examples of why I don't necessarily agree with atheists and on the other side
I don't necessarily agree with you know with Christians
Evolution is one of those reasons. We could sit down and talk about it for a long time.
But evolution is not an inherently atheist position
That's a scientific conclusion
Evolution is a fact
Well..
And whether you're an atheist or not, you know, that's not relevant to the question of evolution.
Yeah one of the biggest promoters of evolution in the last decade was Francis Collins who was
The head of the NIH I believe
Yeah, I think so.
And he is a committed Christian and has written a lot of stuff about his Christianity
but he is also a passionate fighter for science and
And argues strenuously against the idea that evolution is an atheist idea
Yeah makes sense
So it's kind of a tangent to begin with is all I'm saying
Well if we could just go back to the reason of my call was just to you know to bring up the fact that
I just think it's
Exhausting
To always have to come back to the Bible
There's a guy on YouTube his name is Anthony I don't remember his last name,
but he goes around, asks people - Magnabosco? -usually christians. Yeah
The street epistemology guy.
We had him as a lecturer a few months ago, he's a big fan of our show
Well not a big fan, but yeah
I don't know he watches and he had some nice things to say about us
But you know I'd love to see this guy you know
Go out and and ask
People who aren't religious
But he seems to never do that
Okay, so you're talking to people who are not religious. What do you want to ask us?
Well, no, that's the, ha ha
But you guys, you guys don't believe in God though.
That's true. But you do right?
Well, yeah, I do.
So, why?
Oh, well, I have a lot of reasons why I believe in God and science is one of the biggest reasons
Give us the best one.
Well, one of the best ones
There's a lot of weird stuff out there, and I've seen a lot of weird stuff
You guys believe in evolution so it's gonna be.. it's gonna be very hard to
to get you to understand something why I don't believe in evolution and all that but it's just
scientifically it just does not work and that's
Wait a minute. You were talking about why you believe a God exists, and now we've jumped back to evolution, so.
Yeah because the fact that evolution does not work for me is..
..one of the reasons why I believe there's a God and now when I say that I believe that there's a God
I don't want you to get this image in your head of this religious God. You know it's..
Alright, so, tell us specifically what this God is like so that we don't have an inaccurate picture
Well, we don't know that now do we?
Well, then we're talking about something you don't know about and trying to get us to accept this thing
That you've just said you don't know what you're talking about
No, no, I'm not trying to. OK, guys, I'm not trying to convince you to agree with me. I just brought up the point that..
..The whole point of my call is just to share with you guys that I'm tired of these debates
Against religion and atheism. That's really what I wanted to say.
So get your own show.
Well, we're not tired of these debates - Yeah, we didn't call you. - I'm really curious about this because you started to tell us
That one of the biggest reasons you believe in a God is because all these weird things happen, but then
Then you jumped into evolution, and I would like to understand what these weird things are
I'm going to have to make a nice list because, you know how it is, I'm calling a live show right now. I'm a little nervous
I don't have any notes or anything
So I'm going to have to make a nice big list and call you back later. In two weeks or something
Then I'll be able to discuss in detail
You're totally welcome to do that if you want
Yeah, yeah
All right, so we'll hear from you in two weeks
Well, possibly
Okay - Sounds good - Well, thanks for calling.