Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 219: Prayer Voicemail Episode

Episode Date: April 9, 2015

We talk about each of the prayer voicemails and then cover one story.

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Helps if you hit the record button. You also have to announce that this is a show. That's kind of what you do.

That first part? That first part is like the only fucking thing you do. The only thing. The only thing. Do not reduce or minimize my contributions, sir. You would be screaming into the fucking meaningless void without my delightful addition to this podcast. How dare you? I love this.

This is amazing. You're explaining your fucking importance to me. How dare you? I deign you to speak. Go ahead. Just because I'm useless does not mean you shall treat me that way. You shall treat me like I'm useful. You must apply this illusion every time you speak to me.

I could be replaced by one of those birds that drinks water. Yeah, that dubs down. Yeah, yeah. It's like a Walter White bird. Oh, by the way, fuck you too. This is cognitive dissonance. Oh oh you think it's so easy anyone can do it i do recording it's true it's all true recording from glory hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance see not everybody has that dulcet tone, though. Admittedly, you do have a nice ring to your voice.

It's all that layers of fat on your throat that weigh down. It's the frog. You're throwing a ho-ho-ho solo. E-chuda. E-chuda. All right, continue. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence.

You're dancing. I am. I'm ready to go at this point. I've been fucking looking at you for too long. Makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at this.

This is episode 219 of Cognitive Dissonance. We are recording it immediately after episode 218. I love it. And I mean immediately. Like, I went up and got a bourbon and now we are recording episode 219. We're back, folks. We're going to do a little something special this time. We're not going to do stories.

Let me take that back. I don't know if we're going to do stories. Because we're recording before you edit we're recording recording before i edit so there may be an extra story in the last show that i don't want to get rid of that i put in this show but that would have already came so i would imagine that we would have started with a few stories if they exist dude this is like trying to explain fucking donnie dark it really is so the fucking jet engine falls to the roof i hated that movie when i first saw it i actually came around to really like that movie but i did not like it when i first saw it i was just like what the fuck just i'm too stupid for that movie so when i first saw it i i needed more

and then i saw it a second time and i and i thought oh i think i understand but i didn't get it when i first saw it so i just thought it was dumb i thought it was like oh a reason to have a scary bunny i didn't i sure right i didn't get it but i i get it so i just thought it was dumb i thought it was like oh a reason to have a scary bunny i didn't i sure right i didn't get it but i get it now and i like it now but there's a i'm trying to remember the name of it it starts with a p there's a there's a fucking time travel movie it's like an unbelievably primer yes i didn't see it you gotta see that no i didn't see it i gotta yell about it with somebody who am i gonna yell about it with speaking of seeing a movie we're're going to try to watch The Going Clear. The Scientology.

I'm going to watch that maybe tonight. We're going to try to watch it and we're going to try to talk about it next show. So 2.20, we're going to try to talk about The Going – so if you haven't seen that, it's called Going Clear. Going Clear. Yeah. It's a Scientology documentary HBO put on. If you have an opportunity to watch it between now and then, it's an HBO documentary, go out and watch it um we're probably going to try to talk about it next time we haven't had an opportunity to really talk about it but we're going to try next time that's going to be the

thing that we we sort of focus on but we want to get back to this show what this show is going to be is talking about to get back to this i don't know let's just fucking wrap it up just here's a skeptic credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie. Great. What's awesome is people shut off the show and now they're not going to actually hear the rest of it. Spiking their MP3 device. So what we're going to try to do is we got a bunch of messages, seven voicemail messages to be exact on. Did you get an answer?

If you prayed, we also got three messages through email of people who said the same thing. They got some messages when they prayed. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through those messages and we're going to sort of oscillate between the two different ones. We're going to read some, we're going to play some,

and then we're going to talk a little bit about what we heard. I think that we want to try to throw this one out because Tom and I didn't ever have this experience. We never had an experience where we thought we got heard when we said a prayer. I know that the closest I come to that is my dog. This was years ago. My dog was very sick. And I remember praying about my dog being very – I was like, man, I really don't want my dog to die.

He was very sick. We took him to the vet. The vet held him for a couple of days and then gave him back to us, gave him some stuff, some surgeries and things like that. And then I – the dog got better. And I remember praying and he got better. But that is a classic example of saying something like I prayed and someone got better. Yeah. But did you take him to the hospital?

Because that also helps them get better. And this is exactly the same thing. I took him to the vet and the vet did all of the requisite things. So he didn't die, but he was near death. And that's, you know, this is a perfect, it's a perfect example of that. So I, I know I did that. You know, the closest example that I have is when I was in first grade. This is a fucking sad story.

So maybe we cut this out. I don't know. But I'll tell it anyway. And then you decide if it's any good. So when I was in first grade, I moved to live from living with my mother and my stepdad. And then I had some step siblings. And in the middle of the year, I moved to live with my dad unexpectedly. And I didn't want to live with my dad.

I wanted to live with my mom. And I moved from Florida to Chicago. And it was a difficult transition for me. And I remember I would pray every night to be able to go back home, not understanding that this was home because I'm in first grade. So I'm fucking stupid. You know, I just – Sure, yeah. You didn't grow up.

I didn't get better. You didn't grow up. I didn't get better. He didn't grow up. I didn't get any better. And so I had made a deal in my head with God that I was going to sleep with my head at the foot of the bed until he let me go back home. Why? I don't know because I'm in first grade.

It's a very interesting deal. You didn't really give up a lot. I mean, I've got to admit, it's not like you were on a hunger strike. I treated it like Lent, right? Where you're like, I'm going to give something up. No, it's less than Lent on a hunger strike i treated it like lent yeah right where you're like i'm gonna give something up no it's less than like you slept in a different position it's like i'm gonna put my arm underneath my head when i go to sleep for some reason it made sense to me as sure as a first grader again first graders are fucking stupid yes absolutely yeah um so i wouldn't sleep facing the right way and i was you know like but i had this idea that like if i did something special if i did something different it would get god's attention i i don't know bottom line is i

lived with my father until i moved out of my house 20 years later did you continue though to sleep with your foot at the bed because i did it for years yeah yeah i did it for years wow i did it until i did it until i moved uh which would beth grade so I did it for at least 4 years oh shit it was like a form of protest wow God is such a fucker but you know like it's fucking retarded is what it is it's first of all

if God heard the fucking cries of you know annoyed children that they didn't get the thing they wanted he would hear the cries of fucking starving children who didn't get the food they need to be alive. Right. You know, but of course, a kid doesn't know that, you know. So here's the first voicemail we got.

I'm going to play it for you and then we'll talk about it. Hi, guys. Glory Hole from Mississippi here. I was actually calling in reference to your most recent episode where you were asking about praying and getting a response. Well, I used to be a devout Christian, and I can remember one of the last times that I prayed was perhaps the most powerful prayer. You can receive feelings.

They're often, of course, just generated by, you know, you. But at the same time, you attribute them to being an answer from God. What I got was affirmation that I should become a biology major, which I'm about to graduate with. You should major in the thing that will almost certainly undermine your faith. That's amazing. Yeah, I think that that's interesting. The faith that your faith will sometimes create these things that make you feel like, you know, you'll get a feeling. Yeah.

I wonder if anybody's ever had a prayer wet dream. Yeah. I wonder if it's the same feeling as when you drive over a really steep hill very quickly and you feel a big drop. You balls tickle a little. And you're like, huh. Yeah. My son gets it. My eight-year-old's like, I got the dinger feeling, Dad.

Dinger feeling! But basically, I was lying in my bed. I was praying to God, asking him what I should do, asking him if he could send me a sign so that I wouldn't lose my faith because I was going through a transitional period. And it was then that, probably through a waking dream, but I just kind of felt this weird sensation of fear and dread and saw terrible pain on people's faces and people dying of hunger, and I thought God answered my prayer and told me to stay in biology. talk, God answered my prayer and told me to stay in biology. But anyway, just letting you know that, yeah, you can't get, you can't feel like God's answering your prayers.

Anyway, thanks for your stuff, guys. And, you know, glorial. So that's like a real direct, like, that's like a vision. Yeah. Like he thought he had a vision. Yeah. Like a meditative, but it sounds like, it sounds like a meditative vision or like a, like a post hoc rationalization. Sure. Thatitative but it sounds like it sounds like a meditative vision or like a uh like a post hoc rationalization sure that's what it sounds like to me too you know from

like a like you said like a waking dream or you know you're you're deep in thought about this thing but you're also laying in bed so maybe your mind is sort of racing and you kind of drift off a little bit and you have those sort of like like those half awake half asleep dreams and you sort of like see some shit you're like like, Oh, that's some shit. I've had, I've had dreams, you know, that really fucked me up. Like the next day where you wake up and you're like, man, I'm fucked up from that. Like I remember having a dream very recently where I was walking with my wife and my dream and I knew she was already dead, but there was this residual echo of her that was still

going to be around for one or two days that I could spend time with. And then she was just going to be gone forever. But I had a time limit like this time limit. And I remember in the dream saying something like, well, we've always had this time limit. It was just much longer in the past. Now it's condensed down into this very, very short time. And I remember being just that feeling of dread that, you know, something bad is going to happen because your wife's going to die in a few days. And it's like, she's going to be gone in a few days. I'm waiting for the bad thing.

Yeah. That's terrible. I don't mean that at all. Amazing. Take my wife, please. Hey, yo, hey. No, Sarah, Tom still likes you. I'm kidding.

This is the second voicemail we got. Hey, guys. This is Stephen calling from Joisey. Say Joisey? He did say Joisey. He's from Joisey. Hey, it's Steve from Joisey. Hey, forget about it.

This guy over here. What's your water? You talking to me? Suddenly it turned from Jersey to New York Italian. Don't make me come over there. I've got one. Pretty soon it's going to be talking like this, y'all. Yes, hello.

This is Steve from Jersey. I'm calling to tell you about my experience with hearing a voice after I prayed. I was in Bible college, and I confessed to my roommate that I was struggling with sexual sin because I have a penis and a hand. And I said to him, I was like, you know, I'm struggling, dude. And he was like, okay. No, that's not struggling, that's strangling. There's a difference between...

That's also asking your buddy for a hand. You really don't want to do that in Bible school, it turns out. Or maybe that actually might be a good place to do it. Maybe. If I do this myself, super sinny. But if you do it for me, I don't know. It's kind of a gray area.

God won't be able to see if you pull the covers off. He can't see. He can't see through comforters. He can't see through comforters. He can't see through an Afghan because they're Muslims. They call that the comforter. That is. So that night, we had like a big worship event.

Yeah, you did. that wasn't that big it was a it was a very average size worship event hey but hey be proud man be proud you let that thing swing if it can or not and uh you know everyone's singing and praising god and he comes up to me he looks at me he's God's going to set you free from sin. I'm like, oh, shit, what? I love that response. I love the response. You're like, fuck, no, I love that. No, don't.

Because if somebody was like, God's going to set you free, i.e., you don't get to jerk off at him. You're like, I got to go. I got food in the oven. God, I really don't want to be free. Slavery, please. I'll take some bondage as long as we actually just take the bondage yeah you could just put chinese finger cuffs on that thing i don't mind and he like laid hands on me he's praying for me like he was fucking becky fisher speaking in tongues and i was like oh my god what this is weird and i was like praying out loud

but it was just this weird spiritual experience. And in the Gospel of Luke, these two dudes meet Jesus, and they don't know it's Jesus. And they're like, did our hearts not burn within us when we fucking saw him? When they fucking saw him? It says it right there in John. It's like right there. It's right there in John, yeah. And I love that Jesus is like, he's wearing one of those masks at the ball. Right.

He's standing there with his monocle and his top hat. Jesus. Excuse me. You can only tell it's him when he shakes your hand because he's got a big hole in it. I'm not sure it's Jesus. And so that's what I felt. I felt like my heart was just like, I literally just had intestinal problems. Like my heart was just burning.

I was like, what is happening? And I felt like I kind of remember it. I mean, it's not really like I heard an audible whisper, but I heard a voice, kind of a voice, I don't know. But it was like, you're free. And my friend was like, dude, God's letting me know you're free from sexual sin. I was like, no way. And so, I mean mean at the time you know as a believer that's a cool experience um i mean that's bullshit though but anyway so that's

uh that's my story glory hole i'm gonna go watch some porn while i'm waiting for the next episode how long did it take him before he masturbated again no no if you're free you just go home and you're like, well, I'm like, it's like when somebody pays off your debt and now you have a credit card again. Right. You're just like, wait a minute. I was over the limit. Now I have all the limit again. Oh, man. What?

But the limit shoots semen. So I got out of it by praying. That means I can jerk off indefinitely and then just pray. And it'll be fine. Yeah, it'll be good. So that was, again, another feeling, right? It's another. Right. This is I can jerk off indefinitely and then just pray. And it'll be fine. Yeah, it'll be good. So that was, again, another feeling, right? It's another, this is somebody talking in tongues over you. And those moments in your life where someone is, you know, talking in tongues or there's

that sort of craziness that's going on. And when there's a lot of people that are sort of all under the same delusion, it can still be very powerful. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I had a talking in tongues experience. Yeah. It can still be very powerful. Oh, yeah. I had a talking in tongues experience. I mean, I didn't talk in tongues, but I was talked at, to, for, by, I don't know, in tongues. I went to like a super ultra mega Christian church because there was a girl I was interested in.

So I went there and I got singled out and like brought to the front and everybody had to reject Satan and accept Jesus. And like he did the hand, like he laid reject satan and accept jesus and uh like he did the hand like he laid the hands on and pushed people over and everything and like people were like falling on the ground and then you were ushered into a like you were ushered away from the congregation into a back room and a woman put her hand on my shoulder and put her head down she did the the ornamana shakalaka booga looga looga thing and i just stood there and for a minute i almost went with it it was like you were almost gonna almost shakalaka Laka Booga Luga Luga thing, and I just stood there. And for a minute, I almost went with it. You were almost going to almost Shaka Laka Booga Booga ding? I thought about it.

I thought, like, I should probably make something up. And then I thought, like, what if I'm not convincing? Like, that was why I didn't do it. Oh, because you thought that she spoke in tongues and she might be able to tell? No, no, no. Translate? I thought. Did you think it was all bullshit?

I knew it was bullshit. Yeah. I was 100% certain that this was all bullshit. But I was afraid to speak in tongues because I was afraid she would know I was faking. Not because I thought she wasn't faking, but that my fake wouldn't be as good as her fake. You know what would have been amazing? You know? Back in the day, you were really talented at saying things backwards.

Yes. I can still do that. You should have said a bunch of things backwards. That would have been amazing. You know, this is all fake or something. That would have been amazing just to start like speaking my mind, but backwards.

I wish I was clever. Oh man, man, to go back in time, to be in high school, just so you could be a dick to other people. I would like to mock your faith. God.

Yeah. So this is a 30 male voicemail. We got, hello. I would like to mock your faith. God. So this is the third email, voicemail we got. Hello, my name is Jennifer Bone, and I'm calling about your episode 216, Luciferian Illuminatus. First of all, great show. Just started getting into it. Really amazing stuff.

And you were talking about how, I forget his name, but there was a man who claimed he had seen a black membrane cover the U.S. And you were doubting that God had talked to him specifically and given him a message. And you doubted whether or not that can actually happen. Well, I used to be a believer, both in Christianity and later paganism. Now I'm not. And I can tell you, yes, that does happen.

At least it happened to me. You can get into a mindset where you actually almost make an extra entity in your head that answers your questions. There's a word for it from, I think, Tibet. I'm sure there's a word for it in German. That's 150 fucking characters long, too. I'm sure if there's a word from German, it actually stretches to the United States. You could actually cross

that word like a goddamn bridge across the Atlantic. For that process. But you actually are able to I guess cognitive dissonance, you make a separate being, and that being is you. But since you've kind of separated from yourself, it feels like it's coming from outside. You trick yourself into believing that you're getting an answer or that you see something.

And it usually has to do with what you expect to see or what you secretly want to see. And for me, that process eventually led to my deconversion because I realized that I was seeing what I wanted to see. I think that's rare. I think more people see that sort of thing. I mean, look at all those people that stand in the audience at Pop-Off. You know what I mean? With the get out of debt free water and stuff. And they have a guy who is a charlatan who stands on the stage and tells them what they want to hear.

And then they buy his fucking $25, $25.99 water to go get out of debt that they don't even have the money to pay for. So I think people more often than not will have that experience where they want to see something so they won't leave. So I think you're actually an anomaly. I don't think that's normal.

I think when people have that, they don't leave. I find it really interesting, the idea that you would have a quasi religious experience that leads to your deconversion. Yeah. Like that's pretty, that's pretty interesting. That's pretty funny. Not funny. Like ha ha funny, funny, like funny like happened. Yeah. Tom, why don't we read one of these first? This first one is from Helena and Helena left us a message about this in particular.

So we're going to read this now. So Helena wrote, I gave it a lot of thought, but I can't think of a single prayer I got an answer to. Not really. There were times I would pray about problems or situations in my life, and I felt like the solution appeared suddenly in answer to my prayer. But even then, I couldn't make myself believe that that was the voice of God and not my own brain arriving at the solution after reviewing and deconstructing the quandary while praying. I was talking to myself, and I still do. It helps to sort things out by articulating them. But I no longer have to pretend there's a God involved. If I had ever heard an actual voice in my head separate from my own internal dialogue or saw visions, I may have stayed a believer much

longer. But I didn't, and I just couldn't lie to myself to protect my faith. In the end, I had to be honest, particularly to myself. I suspect Rick, like many Christians, constructed an idea, meditated over it while praying, and imagined these nightmarish scenarios that were vivid enough to seem real to him. Or just saying stuff that sounds awful, compelling, awfully compelling, that will help him retain listeners and sponsors. Both are very likely, in my opinion. Yeah, that's basically.

I think that that's something that I do. I talk to myself all the time. Oh, yeah. I constantly talk to myself. I talk to myself, especially in the shower, things like that. Like, no, use more soap, things like, you know. More. More.

More. More soap. Nope. We're out of soap. We're out of soap. We need more soap. Whatever it is. Is this KY water-based?

Nope. But I have, I talk to myself all the time. Sure. And I constantly go through things in my head make lists talk about things it's just how i how my brain works yeah uh and i think a lot of people have that i don't have any kind of answering though it's i know it's all my brain when i'm talking to myself yeah yeah but that you know that propensity to chat with ourself i think that that's because i do that all the time too like i'm my wife makes fun of me all the time. At the end of the day, she catches me doing it all the time. She's like, who are you talking to? Me. Some stupid person. Shut up. You know, she catches me doing it all the time. I don't I sometimes I'll just mutter it under my breath

without even knowing that I'm doing it. Yeah. That propensity for the internal dialogue to become external, I think, can can lead us in that direction. This is another voicemail that we got. I'm going to play this one for you. Hi, this is Tim in Colorado. I wanted to respond to your last podcast about do you get a response when you pray? Also, I just started listening to you guys because I think you're atheists. I think you guys are hilarious. to you guys because of the thinking atheists think you guys are hilarious

anyways I don't know if anyone really thinks that they actually hear anything or whatnot I used to think I did when I was younger and I was a believer I look back on it and when I was honest with myself whenever I would talk I would think like God's voice

would come down to me and say like okay hear your prayer whatever type of structure I would think of you. And really, it was more of a projection in my mind of what I would think God was saying and what I would think he would say to how I pray.

So I would say, okay, I would be really good to hear what I would think of his head felt. And I was projecting my head, not like consciously knowing I was lying to myself just because, you know, the whole concept,

people say they have a relationship with God, what that really means is in reality you have this image of God, you have this vision, this thing of what you think God is. And so when you act some way or do something you think that would be rewarding in God's eyes, you project that image to yourself and say, okay, God totally agrees to this. And he says, yeah, so he does that. That's where it was in my perspective. Maybe other people actually saw images

and whatnot. I definitely, back in the day, thought I had dreams that were visions when I was sleeping. Well, really, they're just a pretty quick guess. But I definitely think it's more of a projection image of what you think God is, because just as we look over history, we look at all the religions that existed, it's always coincidence

that the religion or the culture or the person is very reflective of that person themselves. So, anyway, that's smart. Two cents to that. Probably got a little long-winded, but anyway, glory to all the listeners. You know, it's interesting that people have these visions at the same time that we are used to having visions, right? Dream time. Yeah, yeah. At the same time that we are used to having visions, right? Dream time.

Yeah, yeah. It would be an entirely different train of thought if we had visions like Saul, right? If you were on the road somewhere. On a horse. Right. Just doing a thing like, oh, what were you doing? I was doing a little woodworking this weekend. I was working the lathe when all of a sudden I fucking had a vision of, you know, the black membrane covering the earth. But instead, it's during these times when we know, right, we're prone to vision when we're prone to this bullshit, you know, moments of meditation where you can slip into a dreamlike state. Sure. You know, moments of vision or you can just also call it deep reflection, you know, meditation, you know, those moments.

Sensory deprivation places and things like that. It's like, oh, man, in these scenarios wherein the brain is very likely to create this. Yeah, right. Oh, I was fasting or, you know, you'll hear it too. Like I had a spiritual moment while running or performing some extreme exercise. Well, yeah, your body is undergoing extreme. Nobody has it in the grocery store, shopping for an avocado.

Yeah. Right? Nobody's like... I do. I have visions of guacamole, my friend. I see it and I go, oh, the guacamole I shall eat later. So yeah, I have visions.

And if you do, it's because you then had a fucking seizure. Yeah. Right? It's like, oh, I had a vision. Then I was face down on the floor of the fucking jewel, fucking shaking and frothing. Yeah, yeah. Well, oh, I had a vision. Then I was face down on the floor of the fucking jewel fucking shaking and frothing.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, you had a fucking seizure. There's a reason these things happen when they happen in the time of your life, in the day. Sure. Let's read this next one from Mark, Tom. Okay. So Mark says, on last week's episode, Tom mentioned that he wanted to hear about experiences with prayer. I think the best explanation that bridges the gap between believer and atheist is this.

Think of prayer as a meditation. You put yourself in a quiet place alone with your thoughts. Believers will personify this experience by directing our meditation to a supreme being and generally will ask for wisdom, guidance, or advice regarding one of life's challenges. When a believer has a moment of inspiration or a feeling that we have hit upon the right answer, we will attribute it to God in the form of the Holy Spirit providing this guidance. Atheists, I assume, will internalize this experience and believe that they alone have hit upon inspiration coming from the higher

functioning levels of the human brain. So I think atheists and believers have similar experiences coming from meditation or prayer, but atheists internalize the experience while believers credit an external cosmic force with some assistance in the matter. I hope this helps. As always, keep up the great work. You guys never fail to crack me up. Do you meditate? No. No.

I mean, I'll sit and think I do do that, but I don't I don't put myself in a position to think that I'm actually meditating. I will sit and think at like I do this in the shower all the time. That's where I think mostly my most of my thinking happens in the shower. I don't know why. It's just it's just a great place to relax for me. It's quiet. My shower is particularly dark, so I don't have a lot of outside forces that are sort of bugging me at that point. So I, when I go into the shower,

I'll feel comfortable. And a lot of times my mind will wander. So that's the time I set aside a lot of times for thinking. I also do it when I walk. So when I walk places, I sometimes will just turn on soft music and walk and think but those are the only times i do it i never put myself in a position to actually meditate yeah it's interesting because i think there's like this you know believers have they set aside moments for reflection and they set aside those moments depending on you know how you engage your belief um but many of them set aside moments of reflection on a on a really structured basis. I pray every night before bed. I pray in the morning. And so there are so many opportunities for them

to have these internal dialogues, these internal moments, these times where these meditative thoughts kind of get away. You drift off into that whatever um i will tell you that i very very rarely um i don't meditate and i don't structure my uh thinking you know i don't say like oh i'm going to give myself some quiet time between you know six and seven and i'm going to so i think there's less opportunity to be to have those kinds of experiences as somebody who's not a believer because you don't set aside the time the structured everyday repetitive time i have to think that stuff like this is easier like anything else is easier the more you practice it if i practice it every day for an hour i'm gonna get pretty fucking good at it yeah if i practice it once a month for 15 minutes probably not as good at it. Yeah.

Here's the next voicemail we got. Hey, guys. This is James calling from Raleigh. I am a former pastor in a charismatic denomination. A charismatic congregation is the one that if you have a high charisma, you can be a cleric. You get to roll again. You get a good saving throw against certain creatures like a beholder or things like that. So good for you being involved in that.

That's awesome. Who is now a deconvert, nonbeliever. Love your show. It brings me a lot of laughter and a lot of joy. lot of joy. When my son, who turned 13 yesterday, was about two, he fell down some stairs and hurt his wrist. And he was actually a very verbal child and spoke early, very clearly. And my ex-wife and I were afraid that he had broken his wrist. And like a good father, I said, well, let's put him to bed. And if he still hurts in the morning, we can take him to the doctor.

I'm going to stop you there real quick. We thought I think he's I think he's being facetious. I think so, too. And he says, because that seems odd to me that I have broken bones. And I can say, I think I mean mean I can't say this across spectrums. But I will say that broken bones, that would be a whole lot of crying for a very long time I think. Did you break bones as a kid or as a grown-up? No.

I was most – I wasn't mostly grown. I guess I was like late teens. So I think there's a huge difference though because you get those little green stick fractures as like a kid and you heal so fast. Like kids heal in an unbelievable amount of time. There was my boss's kid broke their radius and ulna in their arm. Both of them fell hard enough to break both of the fucking bones. They didn't even cast it because kids grow so fast. Their bodies heal so quickly.

They just immobilized it like an air brace. And like three weeks later, they were out of the brace. Yeah, it's a totally, it's kind of a different ball game when they're little like that. That's why they're all flexy. They're like little gummies. Sure, yeah, yeah. They fit into the weirdest spots. I can fit like seven of them in my trunk. I was going to say you can fit a whole dozen of them in the back of a Buick. So, not that I know. And so as I'm putting to say you can fit a whole dozen of them in a in the back of a buick so not that i know uh and uh so as i'm putting him to bed he looks up at me and he in a kind of a two-year-old phrase says pray for my arm daddy so i uh put my hand on his wrist lightly uh and i invited the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I asked God to heal his wrist.

And it was really pretty freaky. His wrist snapped under my hand, just kind of like his knuckle popped, although I was putting no pressure on his wrist. And I looked at him when I felt it, and he goes, Thank you, Daddy, and laid down and went to sleep and was absolutely fine. Even as a person who has completely lost their faith and somebody who, you know, when I look at the whole message of Christianity and specifically charismatic Christianity, somebody who has done prophetic prayer like you guys discussed on your show with these nutcases and the Christian right, I don't see Christianity making sense as a whole. But for the life of me, I cannot explain that one moment. Now, that is not enough for me to say a Christian, but that was pretty crazy. And she thought I'd

share. Again, I love your show. You guys are absolutely hilarious. Sharp wit, sharp mind. And I got cut off there. I got to say, I hope I run into you. You're going to be here in Raleigh. I don't know how far away Hickory is, but we hope we run into you at ReasonCon. We hope you're there. It's a really interesting story. It's a very interesting story. I'd be very interested in talking with you about your story.

I think that you're going about it in the very right way, though. Just because something strange happened doesn't mean that a God exists. Doesn't mean that the text is right. Doesn't mean that he created the universe from nothing. Doesn't mean he breathed dust of life into dust. Doesn't mean any of those things. All it means is that something weird happened. And the problem with the argument from ignorance is that the the you want to ascribe something to it.

You want to add something to it. You want to say, hey, this weird thing happened to me. I don't know what did it. So it must be X. Well, that's not true. And I like that you reason with yourself and said, well, this weird thing happened. That doesn't mean there's a God. It just means something weird happened.

And it may only be weird to your senses there may have been something that happened at that moment where he snapped and you know i'm sure there's there's there could be a rational explanation for what happened to you it just so happens that uh you don't have one yeah i think i think that's you're right it's it reminds me of like when you watch christopher hitchens debate it's like he says he's very fond or he was very fond of saying, like, even if I grant you the resurrection, even if I give you all of that, you still have all of your work cut out ahead of you. And he's saying the same thing you're saying is that just because something odd happened and I don't have any way to explain it, that in no way implies that all of these other things are true. Each one is a separate claim. Each one requires individual proof.

Each one requires individual thought and attention. You simply can't say, because one weird event, all weird events. Yep. Because if you follow that train of logic, you may as well say, because your son's arm felt better after you prayed over it, then leprechauns ride unicorns through the field of fucking lollipops. Don't ruin this for me, Tom. I've been looking forward to that field of lollipops my whole life. I would destroy that field of lollipops. We got another Reedy.

So go ahead and read this one. It's from Daniel. Back when I was a senior in high school, I was a super Jesus freak. I'd been dating a girl for a couple years, and I ended up getting her pregnant. I was laying in bed one night, freaking out about what I was going to do. I didn't believe in abortion. They still exist, even if you don't believe it. Oh, no.

So we planned to have the baby. But I really, really didn't want to have a child at 17. So I prayed to God to please take the baby away. Oh, no. I told him I would give up anything not to have the child, even my car. And, of course, to a high school senior, your car is the most important thing in the world. A couple weeks later, I was driving home and messing with my radio, and I swerved off the road and totaled my car.

I called my girlfriend to tell her I was okay, but I wasn't going to make it to our Christian theater practice. After I made it home, I called her again, and she told me that she had freaked out so much about me getting hurt that she had miscarried the baby. So I had basically made a deal with God and traded my car for a fetus, which would make God pro-choice,

right? That's pretty great. I don't know. It's a fun story to tell the Christian friends, as they want to believe that prayers are answered, but they don't want to believe that God would kill a baby. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, it's just natural.

I mean, natural causes, right? Sure. And you might have even sabotaged yourself in that situation. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, you know, the thing is, like, the miscarriage may have had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she freaked out or got emotionally worked up. There's no way for you to know that that was the cause of the miscarriage. Absolutely.

Many, many, many, many, many pregnancies end in miscarriage. It's interesting, though, that he's saying it's a great story to tell believers because I think a lot of believers might connect the dots there, though. Yeah, I think they might. They might say, oh, well, you know, you prayed to lose your car. Your car was lost. OK, well, that's it to them. That's a one for one exchange. And then the losing of the baby is just it's it's God is like a amazing Rube Goldberg device where he can just, you know, he can make the fucking mousetrap fall eventually.

Right. Yeah. God decided that you weren't ready. Yeah. You know, if I wanted to rationalize this, I would say that, well, you know, you prayed to God and God learned, God understood that in your heart you weren't ready for this baby. And so he postponed the delivery of this soul to the earth and the price he extracted was your car. Yeah. Because that's fucking insane. But you can get there. You can.

Absolutely. You can get there. Yeah. Hey, hey, Don. This is the there. Yeah. Hey, how you doing? This is the alcoholic atheist calling. I'm just calling. On the last episode, you asked for us to call in if you had any personal experiences or prayers answered. Well, one time I did.

I am an alcoholic, and I do continue to go to AA. I am an alcoholic and I do continue to go to AA. And I was about three or four months sober and I was depressed as can be. And I sat there and prayed and I prayed all day. And then at night I prayed some more and I heard this voice in my head saying, What's the matter, boy? Is sobriety not good enough for you? And I kind of chilled my head and went back. saying what's the matter boy so bright is that good enough for you and I was like kind of chilled my head and went back I know that those I know that all

something in my head I know it's mental it wasn't you know I've become an atheist since then but um yeah I I know that it's something neurological that happened I know it's not you know divine intervention so that's something neurological that happened. I know it's not, you know, divine intervention. So that's the one share. Thank you. Corey. Yeah, I think that's,

I mean, I agree. Yeah, I agree. I think I, you're, you know, it's again,

the thing is, is that you rationalize it while you're in the middle of it. When you're in the center of that, when you're in that believing state, you're not going to, there's nothing's going to pull you out of that. You're going to hear that. What isn't fucking,

you know, sobriety good enough for you, boy. When you hear that, when you're in the middle of that, you think it's something else, but it's the, I don't, I don't discount, you know, there's times at night. It's weird. There's times at night when I'm near falling asleep that I will hear a loud crash. I've heard that. You know, where you just, you just, I don't know where you're just here. Like, boom. And you, you get up and you, what the hell was that? And my wife will say, that was not, I didn't hear anything. Right. And then I'll get up and I'll

do my rounds and it was nothing. What if that loud crash was a voice, you know, in that particular moment, I know that I hear things on occasion. So it's, you know, what, why not a voice of voices? We hear voices all the time. Yeah. there's nothing about our senses that is perfect, right? Our senses are prone to all kinds of errors. Our senses are prone to all kinds of misfires and missteps. And it's not surprising too that like – here these stories tend to have moments of extreme emotional distress. these stories tend to have moments of extreme emotional distress. And it's like,

I was in this moment of extreme emotional distress or worry or, you know, in an altered state. And then I had this weird experience where my, you know, my, I misinterpreted the firing of my, of my neuron. I have.

Okay. That's unsurprising. Again, it didn't happen while you were like, you know, picking through the fucking Romaine lettuce, you know, trying to decide whether to eat this thing or that. You know what I mean?

It doesn't happen during the mundane moments. We have one more talkie. Or we have one more readie. Go read that one. This is from Anonymous. You asked in your last podcast to leave a message about prayer. I can't. I'm not out yet totally.

But something that struck me as very crazy, if not sad and wicked. Yeah, totally. But something that struck me as very crazy, if not sad and wicked. My oldest sister, about 25 years ago, at the time she was in her late 30s, decided with her fourth husband and three grown boys of her own to start adopting all these kids. Kids they rescued from abortion and so on. She said that it was all about how she and her husband would pray and that God answered her prayers and about who to adopt and when. And I thought it was odd. She called me when I was living in Boston and doing volunteer work with the AIDS Action Committee about a baby that had been brought to their attention but had HIV. I guess they prayed and God said not to adopt the baby because they never did, citing fear of safety and all that. Wouldn't you think if God answered prayer that he would have said, yes, adopt this baby.

It's no different than the others it just happens to have hiv i think if there was god babies wouldn't have hiv and you have hiv and you have hiv and you have hiv but no they were scared and of course all hiv was a result of gays which you can imagine her opinion on that. And they didn't want to heed that prayer. But I sound ridiculous as if the prayers before that had ever truly been answered by a supernatural deity. If it hadn't been her claim of the God factor saying adopt these children but leave out the HIV kid, I would actually maybe support her actions. I just wonder all the time how she rationalizes what she did.

I think people look to prayer as the post hoc rationalization, right? It's confirmation bias. And I will admit that I do this. I'm so guilty of this. I catch myself doing it and I shame myself. I'll buy something. Sometimes I will buy something and then look up the reviews to see if I bought a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, well, I'm just confirming. All I'm doing is making myself feel good about what I've already done. It's not that much different than this. We have one more voicemail on this particular subject.

We do have another couple of voicemails that are on a different subject, but we're going to play this one. This is the, uh, about prayer still. Hi, uh, this is me from Alaska.

Don't know if you have, you know, you have Alaska listeners, but apparently you do. So this is in response to the most recent podcast where you asked a question about praying and thinking you've got it. I'm, the only time I can think of anything that would be similar to that was when I was in the Marine Corps. I went through boot camp and as a freak of sight I was raised being a perfectionist Buddhist. So I didn't quite come to this country, not at all, I didn't come to this country,

Chris is a respecter. So we had some time to play out our before we arrived at that night. As you can maybe imagine, this is an incredibly high-speed fire physically and so it was always very cathartic to engage in something like that.

That might be when I sat down and I started praying. I don down and I started to pray. I don't think I ever thought a direct, you know, something talking to me, but it felt like you saying

it was a sense of euphoria like being connected to the universe for a little bit. It was very difficult to describe. It felt like I would be telling all of the, you know, that everything was connected and, you know, everything was great. Looking back on it now, it's pretty simple to say that that was I had a huge endorphin release and had a very cathartic moment in an incredibly stressful environment that helped me get through it. I don't think I actually got a response or that, you know, the universe was talking to me. Otherwise, I would probably still be a genius.

All right. Well, I hope you guys can make some use of it. Have a good night. Bye-bye. Yeah, endorphin release. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember when I was having existential anxiety, I had a couple panic attacks. This was years and years and years ago. I was just in a bad, bad way. And I remember having some really strange experiences during those panic attacks because at that point I was really searching for some kind of answers because I was coming to the terms of death. That's what causing the panic attacks was my existence, right? And so I'm having these crazy panic attacks. And I remember having, um, like visions while I was driving one time and just like visions of like a field and like this feeling that I had lived before. I

remember thinking that I had lived before that this was a reincarnation feeling that I, my body was telling me it's okay. You go on, there's going to be, you know, a continue. I remember the vividly having this feeling really um and when it was in the moment i was really intrigued by it i remember being intrigued by it but then after i would say maybe it was it was more than an hour and a half i just realized like that's bullshit like this is your body playing tricks on you sure this is your mind panicking needing something to sort of fucking stop the dam that you have opened and one thing that it can find comfort in and it's just trying to find something to stop you from panicking that's

i reckon shitting up chemicals i recognize that later but i didn't recognize it in the moment so i can see that you know that's a thing so yeah it's again it's that extreme duress yeah you know it's extreme stress and your body's just like, I need to react to this. Yeah. That's what it does. Yeah. It tries to, your body's like, we have defense mechanisms to comfort us, to get us to the next moment.

Yeah. You know, I mean, that's, that does not, it does not fight any kind of evolutionary thought whatsoever. So I want to play a couple of voicemails. Um, uh, the first one is, uh, from Mike in, uh, in California. The first one is from Mike in California. Hey, guys. It's Mike in California again. I'm just trying to pimp out Seth Andrews, the thinking atheist.

Not that he needs more advertisement. Anyway, this latest episode, if you think Seth Andrews is soft, listen to his latest episode, Coexist. It is 40 minutes of him ranting and raving at 4 o'clock in the morning after doing the Australian tour. It is fantastic. It's basically a toned down version

of you guys. And of course, you know, this is extremely professional twist. Not like you motherfuckers. Anyways, it's fantastic. Have a good day and glory hole. I took Mike's advice and on the way down, I listened to it. And

one of the things that he says, he gets on the Christians who go, he calls them cafeteria Christians. And he says, when you walk up and you take the very sweetest morsels and you neglect all the bitter ones, and you somehow think that that makes you, you know, a good person, uh, you know, he talks about that for a minute. And one of the things I was thinking is that it goes even farther than that. There's a moment where you're neglecting the bitter morsels to take the sweetest ones actually legitimizes all those bitter ones. like the fucking American Family Association, you know, millions and millions of people reflect on the sweet moments, the fucking, you know, the little cutie cutesy huggy prayers, you know, the little cherub kids or whatever, like fucking love is type scripture. Those people, those millions and millions of people who subscribe to that legitimize

the fucking American Family Association because it's part of the same book and you can't say well christianity is bad because it has this fucking awful shit in it where people hate gay people it reminds me of like and again i i twice in one episode i'm going back to hitchens but like there's this there's this funny thing hitchens always does in his debates or frequently does in his debates he's like at least with the He's like, at least with the, he's saying, you know, at least with the Old Testament, at least with the Jews, when you're dead, that's it. They bury you. You're gone.

There's no heaven and hell. He's like, it's not until Jesus, meek and mild, shows up that you're thrown into a lake of fire to burn for all eternity. And it's the same thing. It's like, well, we'll ignore the fact that this is a new, this is a new piece that's being thrown into our theology, this eternal damnation, eternal punishment. Like, we're just going to ignore that. We're going to talk about all, you know, oh, he was nice. Don't cast the first stone.

Ha, ha, ha. Everyone loves everybody. And then, you know, forget about the, you know, I didn't come here to ignore or to – I came here to enforce the laws or, you know, all the other shit. Sure. Yeah. You know, in the fire and the damnation and all that stuff. It's it's all in there. You can't you can't pick one and not the other. This is another voicemail we got. This is about the Worldwide Church of Christ. I think it's the Worldwide Church of Christ. I may be misremembering. Hey there, you corpulent bastard this is jeremy up in that

cheddar flavored state north of you hold on first before we get into this wisconsin sucks giant donkey balls that is the worst state ever there's only one redeemable place in wisconsin and that is madison the rest of it can fall into a hole don't talk to me about don't even look at me about milwaukee i like parts of milwaukee yeah there might be a brewery up there. There's several that I like. But fuck the rest of it. The fucking brewers and their fucking shithole up there. Let me tell you something. There's no place in the States that smells more like Pine Sol than fucking God damn.

And I hate Green Bay. I hate Green Bay with a passion. I hate Green Bay. I hope every time Aaron Rodgers trots out on the field, he snaps his fucking leg off. That's what I hope. And he fucking has to play with a walker for the rest of his life. Okay, we're going to continue. You're making fun of the Feast of Tabernacles and some of those old Jewish holy days.

And I have to tell you, you're just touching the tip of the comedic iceberg. I grew up in an Old Testament cult uh, cult called the worldwide church of God. And they celebrate all of those old holy days, including the, uh, the old Jewish Sabbath. So check them out and get ready to laugh. Glory home motherfuckers. All right. So I got a couple of these up here. Um, these are feasts. These are the feasts of the old Jewish religion. The Passover, which you've heard of before. Unleavened bread, which is chag hamatsi. Yes. That actually sounds like a martial art. The chag hamatsi. Oh my God, he used chag hamatsi on me.

Yeah, it's like he fought with Wen Chun. First fruits? Which would be better if it was fist fruits. First fruits? First fruits. And that's... I claim my right of first fruits. And I'm not kidding. This is how it's spelled. Reshit Katzir.

That's how it's... Reshit. That's just the feast of taking out the cat box. Reshit. And then there's Pentecost, which is Shaulvat. And then there's fall feasts. The Feast of Trumpets, which we said before, the Feast of Tabernacles, and then the Feast of Atonement, which is Yom Kippur. How is there anybody not fat in the Jewish faith? Tell you what, man.

Well, because you fucking, what are you going to eat? Matzo ball soup? I mean, it's not bad. I mean, I would eat it. I mean, yeah. I mean, I'd eat a lot of it. But I knew we're kidding. It's basically dumplings.

It is. It's just dumplings made with stuff you wouldn't normally eat. Yeah. All right. So this is stuff you wouldn't normally eat. So this is the final voicemail we're going to play. This is Foster from Foster Disbelief, the blog. Hey, guys.

This is Foster Disbelief calling in again. I just finished listening to episode 217 and the bit on Phil Robertson's pre-Brexit sexual fantasy thing. I mean, I don't believe anyone actually believes his argument that the only reason people don't rate the murder is because they're

scared about God. But if somebody does, God, that scares me. Someone who only refrains from committing a morally repugnant act, through murder or rape, because God told them not to do the act, is a ticking fucking time bomb. What if there's conclusive proof tomorrow that God does not exist?

Or you find a dead body of God on the surface of Titan? Do these people constrain only by their belief in their deity's laws having them turn Alabama and Mississippi into rape-villain USA? Do these people have to remind themselves not to rape and kill every day? Oh, shit! That girl

is hot! Not alone in this country road! I bet I could rape her, decapitate her head off, hide her in the forest, you know, whatever you like. Maybe so. Wait a second. God would know. Fuck.

Damn all-seeing sky daddy. I really hope people don't believe this shit. Anyway, well. You know what you got a decapitator head off under a cover like we talked about earlier and God can't see. He can't see it. It's like lead. It's like gamma ray. It's like when you go to get your x-ray and they put the little blankets on.

Yeah, right. It's just like God can't see what happened. Can't see it at all. That's why I always get a handy from the dentist. God can't tell. The dentist always puts me under, but I assume I get a hand. One of the things that I wanted to mention, and this is something that Foster mentioned on his blog when he talked about this particular event, Foster blogged about this, that prayer breakfast. And he mentions us as well as part of something that he blogs about. But one of the things that

I want to mention is something that I didn't mention during the piece that he picked up on that I noticed, but I didn't mention. So I think it's a very important piece, though, and something that we missed talking about. OK. There is a part of that speech that Phil Robertson is giving. He starts talking about what's going to happen to this, you know, these cute little atheist daughters and this and this and this. Then he switches from the third person to the second person. He stops saying they, you know, there's a group that comes by and decapitates her head

off. And he says, you take a knife and you cut off his manhood. He specifically changes perspective in the middle of it which i think belies his own hatred at least in my opinion right for atheists in that case yeah that's true because now he's the actor right yeah in that or you are right yeah but he's the yeah but but as the author he has put he is the one responsible for putting you in the position of act that's true. You want answers? I think I'm entitled.

You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. So this story comes from OccupyDemocrats.com. Fox News compares gays to Nazis to justify Indiana's bigoted law. And see, so I think we have a clip for this one. This is Alan Combs on Fox News. He's on someone's show.

It's a blonde woman, but I don't know her name. But this is from Fox News. We also ought to be sensitive to people whose religious beliefs would preclude them from carrying out their duties in their business. You know, when when when forced by the government, would we want would we force a Jewish sign maker to make swastikas or or no, it's a it's a legitimate thing or or more to the point would we make a muslim business owner handle pork why is that more to the point why is the muslim example more to the point wait so how exactly are you going to get a muslim to handle pork yeah they don't sell it wait could you maybe so it's like a gay wedding and you'd be like i would if you're gonna make a cake can you just ice a pork chop for me you and you'd be like i would if you're gonna make a cake

can you just ice a pork chop for me you just i don't want i just what i want is bacon icing on a pork chop can you do that maybe you go in for a massage and you turn over it's a pork sword massage there you go there you go or you just maybe they're if you're a photographer and you're like yeah can you take my picture no no hold this ham just hold this i don't need you to do anything with it just hold it And then take my picture. How the fuck are they handling pork? Like you walk into their store. They're like, hey, it's a fucking like Muslim grocery store.

It says right on thing. Fucking Muslim grocery store. You got any pork? No, that's not a thing we sell. You're racist. No one does that. No, no one does that. It's not on the menu.

Suddenly you're going to have to you're going to force them to make it right i i'm a i like it's like falafel arras and you'd be like oh sorry uh you're gonna have to make this roasted pork for me no i don't have to make that because it's not on the menu it's not like you go to go to bill's catering and bill only has burgers and chicken and you say well bill i want pizza i don't fucking make pizza i know it's you're not comparing apples to apples in these examples. You're telling somebody to sell a thing they don't already sell. So now you're making them sell something they don't

sell to someone they don't want to sell. It's a different... It's a totally different argument. It's a totally different argument. Where is allowing someone with a sexual orientation into your store anti-Christian, for example? Why can the government shut down a baker whose religious beliefs preclude him from baking a cake for somebody who's having a place of public accommodation

that's why that's an interesting thing because you're a place of public accommodation that's what combs says combs says your business is a public accommodation what do you think of that i think if you are open to the public you know like I'm thinking of like my dad had a business and it was a business to business business. So in other words, he didn't sell. Generally speaking, he did. His business model was not to sell stuff to walk in off the street business. It was a business to business sales. I think there's a case to be made that if you are a business that has store hours and a storefront and you're open to the public, you can't refuse.

You can't refuse service. You can't say like no blacks get to sit at my diner. It's a settled question. We went through this. Yeah. You know, you're open for business. You have a store that sells a thing to the public. You've not said, you know, we are a store that only sells business to business because there's businesses that do that.

Sure. There's medical supply companies like the first thing that pops to mind that sell medical supplies. So like if I can't just call a fucking MRI manufacturer and be like, give me all your MRIs, even if I have the money. Right. Yeah. They can be like, sorry, we sell business to business.

I only sell to hospitals. That's perfectly reasonable. But if they sell to the public, they can't not sell to me. So you can't sell to the public. But well, in the public, it's a very important word. But hasn't the government, the Supreme Court, at least in its Hobby Lobby finding, didn't it find that for your religious beliefs, you can abstain from certain point has Your point has been wrong recently as much as it's been right. All right, but what about Utah? What about Utah's religious rest or freedom rest?

Who's being denied freedom here? Tell me who's being denied freedom. Somebody is being denied a freedom to bake a cake or take a photograph if their religious beliefs preclude them because they believe in traditional religion. Can I have the freedom to not let a black in my store or a Jew? Can I have that freedom? Can I have the freedom not to allow a Christian in my store? Because I don't like what that person a Jew? Can I have that freedom? Can I have a freedom not to allow a Christian in my store? Because I don't like what that person stands for.

Can I have that freedom? Why did the LGBT community support Utah's Religious Freedom Restoration Act? It's the same thing. This is arguably an extension of the Clinton law as well. Isn't that exactly how these things go? Somebody will say something that's a question and somebody just starts into saying something completely different. They don't even address what was even said. That's why these kinds of forums are not valuable. Like they're not at all valuable. starts into saying something completely different. They don't even address what was even said.

That's why these kinds of forums are not valuable. Like they're not at all valuable. It's just like, I'm going to yell about this thing. Cool. I'm going to yell about this thing too. And it's almost like they'll never intersect. They're parallel lines. They're never going to intersect. It's have similar laws.

We just remember recently that Arizona, Jan Brewer, the governor there, vetoed that law. But 19 other states have it. 19 other states have those laws. However, their laws are very different. I was reading a very succinct article this week that talked about why Indiana's law was very different. And the reason why is that Indiana's law, unlike all the rest of these laws, tried to mediate disputes between parties, personal parties, not mediate disputes between the government and the people. And that's how it was different, which is why it would allow people

to do things like that pizzeria. So that's why it was different. It was different in that sense. Now, I read the law and I'm not a law talkie guy, so I don't know exactly. To me, it all seems like gibberish. Laws to me seem like gibberish. So I'm not an authority on this, but I read a couple of articles that said basically the same thing. So I don't take that for what it's worth. It may or may not be true, but it's what I read. And Alan, why do you roll your eyes at making a Jewish sign maker make a sign for a skinhead rally? Because that is not the same thing. Of course it is. Again, you know, bring it up, Nazis is always a default position. Take that.

Combs sometimes, you know, as fucking skeletal as he looks, once in a while he has a good thing to say. Well, he's the only one on the panel and they all just beat up. I don't understand. He must get paid a bloody fortune. Yeah. I feel like, too, one of the things that I was arguing this week, lots of different people were arguing this point. They were talking about this Indiana law and they were talking about how the market's going to sort it out.

Sure. The market's going to sort it out. The market's going dealt with it in that state, the way the consumers of goods in that state, the convention goers in that state, et cetera, dealt with it was a very free market way to deal with it. Yeah, right. A lot of people when they say – it's mostly the libertarians and mostly I think the conservative libertarians who will say things like, let's let the market deal with it. Let's let the market handle this sort of thing. say things like, let's let the market deal with it. Let's let the market handle this sort of thing. If they, if they're gay and people don't want to serve them, then they'll just go out of business. If that's the case, if people don't want to serve them, then they just won't go out. They won't have any business to go to. And in, in a lot of ways, I saw those same people bitching about this law coming into effect and these people pulling out of the state. And I thought to myself, isn't

this exactly what you wanted? You wanted this. You wanted the free market to deal with it. Well, this is the one way that the free market to deal with it is fucking you get Salesforce, this billion dollar corporation saying, sweetheart, we done. Yeah, we done. I'm moving on. And suddenly everybody's bending over backwards to save all these big deals because people don't want this business to leave Indiana. They don't want it to leave. Because people don't want this business to leave Indiana. They don't want it to leave. And even in the free market way, even in a way that you can do it free market wise, the problem isn't the cities.

It's never the metropolitan areas that are the problem. Because you're right. This shithole fucking place in the middle of like Indianapolis is that doesn't serve gays is going to go out of business. I don't care how many bigots you get to come to the door to buy cakes. in the middle of like Indianapolis is, is that doesn't serve gays is going to go out of business. I don't care how many bigots you get to come to the door to buy cakes. They're not buying cakes every day. So you're going to get, you're going to get fucked. There's no way you're going to stay in business. If you're a bigoted business in the middle of a metropolitan area,

the moment you get outside of that metropolitan area, how many people are going to have those? We serve all rainbow stickers in their window. That might actually be a way to put yourself out of business in a rural area sure you could go under because you're inclusive in certain areas so you know it's real easy to say oh well let's let the market handle it well yeah you could say let the market handle it when you're in a metropolitan area but when you're in a fucking rural area you're still dealing with fucking oh i'm gonna fucking run

the red white and blue through my truck you You know? Right. Yeah. Right. I was thinking about this relative to my, my business. So I work, I work for a title company, right? And I've worked for title companies where it was just me and another guy in an office. And there are many, many instances, many, many instances where people have got to close that day. So let's say there's an instance. I was just thinking about, like, how can this be bigger than a cake real quick? And I just thought I'd just translate an example. So let's say you have an example where it's me and another guy. Cecil, you and I are working together, and we're the only two people in this office.

I hate this job already because I'm doing all the work. Dude, it sucks real bad. Oh, man. Because I'm management in this case. Oh, no! And we're both bigoted assholes, right? I quit. I quit.

And there's a lot of title companies that are just two or three people. Sure. And they're all bigoted. Rural communities. And they're all bigoted. Oh, God. Well, there goes my career. Anyway, so there's lots of little title companies in rural communities where there's two or three people.

There's little mom and pop shops. And there are many scenarios where people, for a number of reasons, need to close on a transaction that day. The property might be about to go into foreclosure, and this transaction saves it from foreclosure by selling it to somebody. You may have already sold your last house on Tuesday, and you're buying your new house Wednesday, and you're paying a rent credit. There's so many scenarios in housing and in real estate where timing is very, very critical. And you don't walk into the closing office. So in other words, you don't walk into the title company until the moment that you close. If you're closing Tuesday at three, you've never met me

in Illinois until Tuesday at three. You've never talked. It's different in different states. So you walk in and you're a gay couple and you're buying a house and I refuse to sell you. I refuse to process your transaction. What happens to your earnest money? a house and I refuse to sell you. I refuse to process your transaction. What happens to your earnest money? The house now gets lost to foreclosure. It didn't close Tuesday. It was going to a sheriff's sale on Wednesday. That house is gone. The seller didn't get to sell it. Their credit is trashed. Now they have a foreclosure on their credit instead of a sale on their credit. Their credit is trashed. The buyers put $10,000 in earnest money. Who gets the earnest money? Does the seller keep it or does the buyer? I don't know.

Neither one of them are really at fault. You've got a fucking mess. The buyers maybe sold their last house. They're out of a house living out of a fucking moving truck now. This isn't just cakes. You know, cakes are just an example. And this is just an example I happen to be familiar with. There could be transactions where hundreds of thousands of dollars hang in the balance.

And I could very easily be like, I'm sorry, you're not closing today. And that's it. And now you don't close. Maybe now you don't close for a couple of weeks because you got to move escrow to another title company. Sure. Or what if they're just dicks and they just move you to another day? Yeah. You know, I mean, but I could just refuse to service.

I could just refuse. And I could even I could I could do that under this law and say – Not anymore. They changed it. Right. But before they had changed it because, yeah, they did emergency changes because they don't want businesses walking the fuck out. Yeah. But people's lives could be irreparably damaged.

Absolutely. Absolutely. By this sort of shit. And it's not just a cake and it's not just photos and it's not just a fucking wedding. It's a lifestyle you don't agree with. Right. Well, too fucking bad. And's, you know, a lifestyle you don't agree with. Right. Well, too fucking bad, you know. And the market, here's why the market sucks.

In my other example, let's say you're the buyer and you're, you know, the gay couple that walks in. You didn't get to choose the title company. The seller chose the title company. Yep. So you got fucked and you didn't even get to make a market choice. That's how it works here in the Chicago markets. So you can totally get boned and lose thousands and tens of thousands of dollars.

So this was a weird show. A show we're not normally used to doing. I think it turned out pretty good, so we're going to keep it. And maybe it'll be a great show, maybe it won't be, but this is something that we just put together as an extra show this week. We hope you enjoyed it. We're going to be back again next week with another full show. We're going to be talking about the going clear documentary part of it. And then part of it, we'll also be talking about some news stories. Specifically, we're going

to maybe try to find some Scientology stories. uh, but we're going to leave you until next time. Like we always do with the skeptics. Creed credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter. Mommy issue. Hypno Babylon. Bullshit couched in scientician, double bubble toil and trouble. Pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing,

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