- Every time John introduces us to somebody
he says we're engaged.
(upbeat music)
- I'm John Rael, and I am a skeptical filmmaker.
- My name is Kevin Conover and
I'm a Young Earth creationist.
- I make films that promote science,
critical thinking, skepticism.
- I have a radio program where I talk about apologetics.
A lot of people don't know what apologetics is.
It comes from a Greek word, apologia,
it means "to defend," and I teach apologetics
to Christian school students.
- When it comes to evolution versus creationism
I think evolution is real and creationism is a story,
it's a myth, it's a religion.
- I believe in a six day creation,
what it says in Genesis in the Bible.
- Spending a whole day handcuffed to anyone
is gonna be awkward.
- I like trying new things.
I'm kind of excited.
- Let's get handcuffed.
I want to meet this guy.
- I'm ready to put the handcuffs on.
(upbeat music)
Nice to meet you, John.
- Kevin Conover? John Rael. - John Rael.
Ready to do this?
- I haven't been arrested too often, so.
- Oh yeah, now this will be my first time in handcuffs.
Look at that, that's the real. - This is the real, like.
- No flexibility there.
We're going to be really, really close to each other.
- What are the terms of blasphemy for you?
I was Catholic, so that means I have a ton of swears in me.
- You don't say things, like "Blank damn it."
And don't, say, use Jesus's name in vain.
- Let's go.
(laughs)
Okay, here we go.
- We got into the car through the passenger side.
And then crawl over to the driver seat
because we're handcuffed,
and I don't know how else to do this.
- This guy's giving exposition.
(laughter)
- You're the, sorry, I'm not so experienced
with filmmaking.
Okay, here we go, hopefully we don't crash.
You know, if you want to accept Christ,
now might be a good time.
(laughs)
So as soon as we got into the car, we were talking about
how do you get chlorophyll if the sun's energy's
coming to the Earth, and chlorophyll
is what takes advantage of the sun's energy.
How do you get the chlorophyll to evolve
if it doesn't exist yet and there's nothing
to harness the energy?
- And I was like, hold on?
A little biology card to play,
and that's when we met Steven Orzack.
- That is what I'm asking, yeah.
- I was comfortable with it,
I kept announcing our engagement.
- And I said, "No, we're not engaged,
"I have a ring, I am married."
So, when did you start getting into filmmaking?
- Well, you know, you come to LA to do the acting thing,
and you're like, "Well, I'm sick of commercials,
"I'm sick of background work, so I got to start
"making my own cool stuff."
And so that's kind of what I do now.
What about you?
Where are you taking the podcast?
- I'm sharing a Christian perspective on the radio
and that's what I've done my whole life.
I've had a lot of questions about God
because I kept running into all these people
that didn't believe what I believed.
And so I was like, "Man, what in the world?
"What do I believe?
"And how do I know that what I believe is true?"
At what point were you like,
"I'm definitely an Atheist?"
- I was 14 and we asked our drama teacher,
"What do you believe?"
And she's like, "Oh, I don't really want to discuss it,
"but I'm an Atheist."
And I just started reading all these websites
and books, and I'm like, "Oh, crap, that's what I am."
- I was born with believing parents,
but biblically, the argument is that
it's something you have to decide for yourself,
it's not something your parents can decide for you.
- I think if anything could change my perspective
it would be the evidence.
- I'm open to having my perspective changed.
Experience has told me that's unlikely.
- And then we ended up at the Natural History Museum.
- Right when we walked in the had a dinosaur exhibit,
which I was not expecting.
All throughout, it's mentioning evolution,
and it's mentioning millions of years.
How do you know that this creature was from
all the way back then?
I'm questioning everything from this
evolutionary paradigm.
- At the Creationism Museum, as you can expect,
it was a little frustrating.
There were children there, and that breaks my heart.
- I think it's good that kids have
the opportunity to choose.
- We should examine them, we should look into them,
hypothetically, in our own time, but when it comes to, like,
you know, "Hey, here's the stuff you need to learn, kids."
If I had my way, we would be in a society where
Creation Museum would never occur to somebody.
- I am radically opposed to what he just said.
- We got to the radio station, and I got my man
Ross Blocher on the line.
- Is Christianity specifically good for culture,
good for society, or is it a detriment,
and a drag on society?
The difficulty I have is an Atheist
who tells me they have a yardstick.
Because, there is no yardstick except
the yardstick you make.
And we also have Michael Shermer who is a publisher
of Skeptic Magazine.
Michael, thank you so much for taking the time
to be with us today.
The Big Bang is a poof and it happened,
I mean that's what the Big Bang is, right?
All the 28 billion light years across
came from absolutely nothing, that's the claim.
And it came with it without a designer,
or purpose, or anything.
To me, if you want to talk about, "Let's become a skeptic."
I'm like, "That's crazy."
It's hard for me to understand why you would think
it makes more sense that nothing made everything.
- Nobody is saying that nothing made everything,
we're saying, "We don't know, therefore,
"we don't fill in our lack of knowledge
"with whatever we want."
(laughter)
- This is my wife, Marissa.
- [John] How are you?
- Hi.
- He got there, and my wife immediately
kicked into, you know, hospitable mode,
and she's just really good that way.
Yeah, they're serious.
- They're the real deal.
I'm not worried about the handcuffs
as much as I'm curious how our bathroom breaks
are gonna work.
- You know, that's gonna be a little weird.
Okay, ready?
I'm going to the bathroom.
- Oh, it's real.
- [Kevin] (laughs)
John, this is Emma, my daughter.
- Emma, how's it going, I'm John.
No pressure, I didn't mean to scare you.
- Can you say nice to meet you?
- Nice to meet you.
- If you guys don't want to be on this, though.
(laughter)
- [Kevin] You want to be on BuzzFeed?
(laughs)
I believe murder is always wrong.
It emanates from God's character.
So, that being the case,
there's a grounding there for morality.
From an Atheist perspective, you may say,
"Murder is wrong."
If I wasn't a Christian, I might say,
"I think it's okay to murder certain people."
Well, where do you go with that?
There's no grounding for morality.
It'd just be your opinion versus my opinion.
- Taking a life that is unnecessarily taken
is not okay.
- Yeah, but who are you to say that?
- I'm a person, I'm me.
- Yeah, but why is your opinion better than mine?
- Because you want to kill--but you would hypothetically
be saying that it is okay to kill somebody, and it's not.
- Yeah, but who are you to force your morals on me?
- The moral actually would be - You're telling me I'm wrong.
- You can't throw somebody's life away from them.
- Yeah, but you're telling me I'm wrong
and you're right.
- In this hypothetical case, yeah.
- Is it okay to tell somebody else
that they're wrong and you're right?
- Definitely.
We're getting ready for bed.
- (laughs) How awkward is that?
- I'm kind of morbidly curious
about how the sleeping arrangement is gonna happen.
- I'm a little nervous about having a guy,
a stranger, sleep in my house, you know,
with my wife and my kids.
That's a little weird.
- Go ahead and use, yeah.
- Yeah, okay, there we go.
Okay, that's what we're doing here.
I put water on my toothbrush.
- You've never slept with a stranger before.
- No, that's true, especially not a stranger
like a guy on the first night, you know?
First time I met you, that's really weird.
And it was actually really comfortable at first,
like I was lying back, and I was just like,
we had all these pillows, we had tons of pillows,
and a gigantic teddy bear, too.
I was trying really hard not to move my arm.
Because I didn't want to bother him,
I didn't want to wake him up,
and so I started to get stiff, and I was like,
"Oh, man, I can't move."
- [John] Marissa, aren't you guys gonna say a prayer,
or something?
- Do you want us to say a prayer?
- [John] I'm not trying to force you into being good
Christians, I didn't think that was necessary.
But I thought that was something that people did
before bedtime.
- Well, normally I pray for my kids before we go to bed,
but you prevented that from happening.
(laughter)
- Good night, BuzzFeed.
- Night.
- We're doing the breakfast handcuff thing,
waking up, lovely morning, how are you missy?
- (scowls)
- [John] No pressure.
(laughter)
(upbeat music)
- Overall, when I was getting involved in
getting handcuffed to somebody who completely
disagrees with me, I was thinking, like,
"What is the point of this?"
As I thought more about it,
I think for me the big takeaway is that
it really helps me to see the humanity of John.
I got to know him as a person.
What was cool about this whole experience
is it's great realizing there are people
who disagree with you about a particular subject,
but that's not necessarily what defines them.
There's so much more to a person than just
their opinion on creation and evolution,
or whatever it may be.
- Yeah, it was nice coming face-to-face
with creationists, not just because,
"Hey, you're a human, I'm a human, it's all good."
But to actually gain respect for who he is
and the way he thinks.
To know that as much as I might feel one way
about his ideology or what he thinks or believes,
I can't necessarily feel that way
about him directly as a person.
- I mean, the conversations we had,
I mean there's no doubt about,
he's a softie underneath this cold, hard exterior.
- You're touching me.
- (laughs)
Here we go.
This is the big moment.
- And, there we go.
- Ah, yes.
- Goodness.
- Ah, I feel like I can stretch.
Praise the Lord.
(laughter)