Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 47: The Atheist Experience

Episode Date: May 11, 2012

Thanks to Matt Dillahunty from the Atheist Experience [Non-Prophets, Godless Bitches] for joining us. A challenge to atheists part 2 The “Biggest Mistake” America Ever Made Was Letting Women Vote North Carolina passes same-sex marriage ban, CNN projects Travesty in Tennessee: Death by faith healing gets a misdemeanor Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry Is the tide turning against the killing of 'cursed' infants in Ethiopia? Archbishop Antonio Mennini, Pope's Representative, Calls For Christians, Jews, Muslims To Unite Against Gay Marriage Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse Beginning clip: Atheist Experience Clips: Michelle Bachmann, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, Jesus Camp, Grocery Money Evangelist, Jesus Camp / Blue Suede Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

Do you want to get cognitive dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. I made a list of things that I might consider sins if the concept of sin were valid. Number one, credulity, gullibility. I'd say that's a sin. Voluntary willful ignorance. I'd say that's a sin. Letting fear prevent you from understanding reality, I'd call that a sin.

Limiting the rights and freedoms of others in order to make them abide by your standards, that's a sin. Sacrificing the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of a child in deference to your religion, that's a sin. your religion, that's a sin. Wasting the one and only life that you know you're going to have, worrying about and working for an afterlife that somebody told you might be there, that's a sin. And it's a shame that so many people are so sucked into this religious thing that even when you lead them down the path step by step, as soon as they get to the point where they'd have to admit that yes, when I think about it, that isn't a moral thing. They instead have to add 20 qualifiers and buts and maybes to their answer, just like you did. Your God isn't real. He's not moral. The Bible isn't moral. Islam isn't moral. None of these religious systems, anything that deteriorates

the value of human beings, anything that hangs on to Bronze Age ideals about genocide and slavery and murder and deference to higher powers, none of those things are moral. We've graduated beyond that, and I'm sorry that we've had to drag religions kicking and streaming in the 21st century, but some of you got to let this stuff go. 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. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.

For this episode, we have a special guest. We have Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience on our show. We were fortunate enough to find him bound and gagged in a closet. And so the only way we agreed to free him was to get him on this show. So, Matt, welcome to Cognitive Dissonance. You sucker, you. Well, I feel kind of duped because you just said there's no welcome, Matt, and then you said welcome, Matt.

I'm an enormous liar. That's probably the first thing to learn about this. So, Matt, we want to go over this story? Editorial. Poorly written article from News 24. Breaking news first. This is definitely an editorial written by a fool um this is a challenge to atheists part two i'll admit i didn't read the challenge to atheists part one after having read part two i realized part one would be every

bit as dim-witted as part two was uh matt did you get an opportunity to take a look at this article? I'm sorry to say that I did. Yeah. It's horrifyingly poorly written. The thrust of the article is basically that as atheists, we don't have anything in our lives to satisfy our spiritual needs. That while our material needs may be met, maybe. They grant that in the article, maybe they're met. Our spiritual needs are unsatisfied. And so we are left with this sort of

vacancy in our lives. What are your thoughts? This is kind of like kindergarten theology. First of all, I'm okay with not having my spiritual needs met until somebody actually demonstrates that i actually have spiritual needs i don't even know what the hell that is don't either but but i i love that i love what he does because it's so typical of these there's a handful there's a number of different types of apologists that you'll find out and around on the net um some of them are extremely arrogant and condescending like a William Landon Craig, or some of them are kind of well-spoken or thoughtful. And I've met some that I've had good conversations with. And then there's the bozos who want to claim,

first of all, this entire post is nothing but Pascal's wager added to you have a God-shaped hole in your heart. Right. And he even attempts to kind of preemptively dismiss any valid responses by claiming that, oh, atheists will just deny this void in their lives. If I said that Christian morality is inferior and deficient, but that Christians will vigorously deny this, that's a really vague form of poisoning the wealth where I'm implying that they're just not credible so that you don't take it seriously when they object. And that's kind of what he's doing. So, you know, the fair argument would be for me to say that Christianity is inferior and deficient in morals and then to actually demonstrate, which, by the way, I'm happy to do at another time.

That seems impossible with all the news that you only hear about the Christians doing good work these days. They've done some great work in North Carolina recently, making sure that homosexuals can't enjoy a life together. They're saving us all from the gays. They are. I'm saved from the – the nice thing is that my marriage was in trouble. I don't live in North Carolina, but I don't think it matters. My marriage was in trouble by the existence't live in North Carolina, but I don't think it matters. My marriage was in trouble by the existence of

gay people loving one another. So they've saved me from that eternal damnation and difficulty. Have sex with ducks. I'm having sex with a duck right now. Actually. If you hear a soft quacking, you know what's going on. It doesn't last much

longer with a duck as it does with a woman, so it won't interrupt the interview at all. Yeah, really know what's going on. It doesn't last much longer with the duck as it does with the woman. So it won't interrupt the interview at all. Yeah, really. It's over. You know, I read this and I have to say it sounds very similar to some of the arguments that are made on your show frequently, which is, but don't you just wish it was true? Don't you just wish it was? You hear that sort of begging, pleading sort of nonsense all the time that, you know, you've got to feel some kind of deficiency. You've got to feel somehow incomplete because, you know, I do. And so you do. And I've universalized my experiences outward toward everybody. And you look at this and you think, well, of course you do. You were told your whole life that you are deficient, that you are imperfect, that you're a bad human being, that you're not good at being good.

And so, of course, you feel that way. And of course, you feel that the only cure for the disease that you have is the cure that we're selling. And you read this article and it just feels like more of the same bullshit. Yeah. Not only do I not wish it was true, I'm with Hitchens that I think it'd be an absolutely terrible proposition if it were true. The fact of the matter is that virtually everyone is going to wonder about ultimate meaning and virtually everyone is going to experience doubts or feel lonely or dissatisfied. But religions, particularly Christianity, experience doubts or feel lonely or dissatisfied. But religions, particularly Christianity,

exploit those concerns and actually begin to make them worse. They take normal concerns, exaggerate them, make the issues worse than they are in order to offer a cure. And because the problems aren't real, the fake cure that they offer seems to work pretty well. And religions like Christianity effectively poison people and then offer to give them the antidote. And so when he's asking, you know, what does atheism offer that's true and beneficial? And by atheism, I'm going to substitute a rational, skeptical, secular worldview because atheism itself is nothing but the rejection of God claims. But what it offers that is value, that is a value, is a way to identify that the poison that they're offering doesn't actually exist. I don't have a God-shaped hole in my heart. I don't experience an emptiness,

a gap or a void. I'm awake. I'm happy. I was a Christian for more than 25 years, so I can speak to this issue from both sides. I am without a doubt a better, more complete, more satisfied, more moral person than I ever was or could have been as a Christian. And I'm just legitimately sorry to see people whose minds have been poisoned to the extent that, I think his name is Richard, Richard says, he's bought into the snake oil so fully that he's on the attack against anybody who dares to point out that the patient was never sick in the first fucking place. What I'm struck by too is that he doesn't mention, one thing he doesn't mention is the downside, which is the fear.

I was a Christian too, and there's a lot of fear of hell. There's a, you know, that's the tool that they use to make you do the things they want you to do is to make you fear hell. And, you know, maybe if you had this God-shaped hole in your heart, do you have this God-shaped place in your, in your mind where you, you definitely need to be, have this fear imposed on you constantly? Because I remember that I was terrified of the rapture. I was terrified of hell growing up. And now that I'm free of that, I feel great. Yeah. I'm with you. You know, one of the, one of the things that I find so ironic you that. I feel great. Yeah, I'm with you. One of the things that I find so ironic is that the cure that they offer is the real poison because the cure that they offer winds up blinding people

to injustice. It skews their moral compass, forces them to sacrifice their humanity for piety, and it makes the world a more muted and muddled mess than the recognition that you didn't need all this. You didn't, you know, this exploitation of humanity. And this really is about, you know, who we are. We're social creatures. And so everybody's going to feel lonely at some point. And instead of saying, hey, you know what, we're all going to feel lonely at some point. Here's some ways for you to actually deal with that. And here's for ways for you to get out and socialize and do things or find ways to be happy with what you've got. They instead find that little pinhole of loneliness and they go and they stick a couple of fists in there and they rip it and spread it way, way open until it resembles this God patch that they want to put on it. It's basically they're fisting you with God is basically what they're doing. They are fisting you with God most definitely. But then you have to tithe, so you have to pay them for the privilege of the fisting. Fisting doesn't get cheap.

Not everybody is eager to get involved in that sort of fun. When you're on your show and you get a call like this, are you just sitting there like, you know, like looking at that lob pitch coming in, ready to hit it out of the park, just being like, okay, here it comes down the pipe. Boom. Am I still on a show? I've actually been on so much for the last month or so. I got back Sunday. We had the elections for the board and I was expecting to go do the TV show afterwards. And I think I'd even told people that I was going to be on. And then I found out that it wasn't my week to be on. It was Russell's. But yeah, when stuff like that comes in, it's a mix for me because there are a lot of people who are fans of the show who are just waiting around for the

really mindless pablum like this article to come in on the phone so that I beat up on some Christian. I'm not going to deny that I, on occasion, have enjoyed that. I don't look at it as an opportunity to beat up on a person so much as to beat up on ridiculous ideas. Right. It's a really bad idea. Yeah. Sometimes it's not so much that I'm ready to hit it out of the park. You know, they're lobbing me a nice, easy one. Oh, I can't wait to watch this one fly, especially when you've hit that same one over and over again. It's like it's the home run derby. I'm fucking 43. How long am I going to play t-ball?

so if you're uh if you have found us uh and are here because matt delahunty's on the show uh and you want to listen to more of him we're going to put him on at the end where we do a quick interview with him uh you're going to have to wade through uh you know 45 or so minutes of us but you know you're gonna be at home because we're angry atheists too so you're gonna be you know it's like a fucking blanket you can wrap yourself around in and just feel the love, you know, or hate or I don't know. I mean, I guess it's more hate than love. But, you know, it's like a blanket. Regardless, the metaphor still works. See, so I'm going to put you on hold if you don't stop talking. I'm going to put you on hold if you don't stop. You're on hold. I'm on hold. You're going to boo me from this show.

If you don't stop, you're on hold. I'm on hold. You're going to boo me from this show. If you're involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it's bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay. It's anything but gay.

So Cecil, we can't not talk about North Carolina this week. We just can't. Can't not talk about it. North Carolina passed Amendment 1, the First Amendment. If you're going to have an Amendment 1, you've got to make sure it's a terrible, awful fucking amendment for evil fucks. And North Carolina did. amendment for evil fucks. And North Carolina did. They passed same-sex marriage ban in North Carolina, rendering themselves intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest. Way to go. I'm glad that they've sort of self-selected out of a rational society in the United States.

You know, if Florida is America's wang, then I think North Carolina is like the pubic region right above it. You know, it's just that sort of nasty, smelly pubic region. And that really does fit sort of North Carolina. It's America's taint. No, the taint would be underneath, I think. We've really got to think about, you know, the actual anatomy of this.

And it's really just sort of the nasty, gritty, smelly pubic region of america ain't worth going to though you know ain't worth living there damn sure get your money get your fucking bags packed get your kids get the fuck out of north carolina make sure every business you have closes down shop there and just fucking leave it a barren fucking wasteland make it look like fucking zombie land after it's done you know it's funny because I saw earlier this week, I did see a map and it showed all the districts within North Carolina and how they voted for Amendment 1. And if it had a university in it, it voted against Amendment 1.

Right. And there's a fair number of universities in North Carolina, which is baffling because they're clearly an uneducated populace. But – That's terrible. That's fucking awful. But if it had a university in it, it voted against this hateful fucking bigoted amendment. If it did not, I mean it was a fucking one-to-one relationship, man.

Shit, man. And that just goes to show that really the more you're exposed to conflicting ideas and different viewpoints of the world, the more you very readily will realize like, hey, bigotry is probably not a great idea. Yeah. Bigotry doesn't bring people together. And really, when you're in college, you don't care who's sucking a dick, right? You have to sign a waiver when you go into college. You actually sign the waiver that you do not give a rat's ass who's sucking a dick. That's just fucking ridiculous. You know, and this is the same week that Obama came out and declared his sort of equivocal

personal support for gay marriage. Why didn't he do this when he was, you know, stop trying to fucking get elected. I'm glad to see he's doing it during an election cycle. But, you know, maybe he should have done this a while ago. Maybe he should have said, you know, I mean, if you believe this, it's not like he fucking changed his mind over the last three years. It's not like he's been like, oh, because he even came out and said during the debates, I remember this. They asked him about gay marriage during the debates with McCain. And he was like, oh, I believe in civil unions.

And he really kind of danced around it. But he, I remember him saying that he was not for gay marriage. And now it's a totally different tune. And you're like, dude, you should have fucking, as soon as you got fucking elected, it's not like they're going to fucking kick you out the moment they're like, oh, it was just for the gays. Throw his fucking dumb ass out. Yeah, I actually, I'm happy that he did it, but I'm honestly a little baffled.

I don't know that this is good for him electorally. It's a hot button issue. And, you know, usually these guys ride the middle and equivocate when it comes to issues like this, unless they're issues that motivate the base. Right. The Democratic base was never going to vote for Romney. motivate the base. The Democratic base was never going to vote for Romney. So there was never any need for him to motivate his base the way there is for Romney in order to get the vote out. And so I'm a little confused politically as to why he would do this unless he felt genuinely moved, perhaps by the events in North Carolina or perhaps by the pressures.

He just wanted to separate himself as far as he could from North Carolina. Who doesn't? Like everyone else should right now. South Carolina is trying to break away. South Carolina is pointing at them being like, look at those conservatives over there. That's just fucking ridiculous. I am – I was a little disheartened by the language that Obama used when he – because he didn't come out and say like I think we should have a policy. He's like, yeah, my personal feeling is this.

Yeah, yeah. I was like, well, great. You're the president. Nobody gives a flying fuck what your personal feeling is. Yeah. I don't care about your feelings at all. Right. At all.

I don't care. I don't care about my wife's feelings. I'll tell you what. If your feelings make policy, then we're talking. Right. You know? Right. And that's the thing is when people say they're religious, I don't give a fuck as long as it doesn't influence your policy.

Exactly. As long as you're not fucking doing like North Carolina. And one of the things in this article, Tom, one of the people they said or one of the people they interviewed interviewed, rather, at the very beginning of the article, they say, we're not anti-gay, we're pro-marriage. No, you're fucking bigots, man. That's not pro-marriage. Pro-marriage would mean everybody gets married. Right. How does that work? That's pro-marriage. Well, I would like to get married. It's like pro-life. Everybody gets a life. Yeah. Right. No, instead it's pro-marriage, meaning only certain people get a marriage. That's actually anti marriage.

Right. No, it's exactly what it is. And everybody sees through it. I don't even know why there's this, you know, like bullshit smoke screen. Like the smoke is fucking see through. Right. You're not motivating anybody who's not religious. Yeah, exactly.

Let me interrupt you real quick, Tom, because it says right after that, it says, and the point, I'm quoting directly from the CNN article, by the way. It says they're quoting her. So I'm actually reading what she said. And the point, the whole point is simply that you don't rewrite the nature of God's design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults. You fucking, suddenly God is available for us to fucking, you know, question on this? And suddenly God's fucking, God's choice is relevant to the people of this country that, you know, aren't religious or believe, you know, don't believe that that's what God really thinks or that are Muslim or that are Hindu or whatever the fuck, you know?

Suddenly it's only the Christians get to fucking choose who gets married. Listen, as a persecuted minority that the Christians claim they are, they clearly have to do these things. They'll crawl up on that cross whenever they get the opportunity. No shit, right? That's for sure. It's like, oh, look at it. I'm a martyr.

I'm a martyr. Help, I'm being repressed. Fucking assholes. One of the primary reasons that it is over for America is because women are taking over. Women are taking over. They're in high, so-called powerful positions now. They're running companies. They're making decisions.

And not all, not all, not all. Let me say not all so that because see, they're Casita running, running, give me a funny face now. When I said not all, she's like, yeah, thank you. But not all. There are some, a few out there that are logical women and can make sound decisions, but most cannot. can make sound decisions, but most cannot. So Cecil, this next story is from the gossipian.com, which I fucking love, by the way.

That's just terrible. Although I've seen this story just about everywhere. This is a story about Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. He's founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. Of a New Destiny, not for a New Destiny. That's what he's the Brotherhood president of. Anyway, he's Sean Hannity's friend. And he's a terrible human being, which would explain why he's Sean Hannity's friend. Right, right.

He said that the worst mistake America has ever made was letting women vote. I doubt that half of America, the half without a penis, would agree with that. The largest voting bloc, too. They clearly don't matter. This video, go to this link, click on this video. It's 12 minutes long. I got about four and a half minutes in before I was just fucking screaming

at my monitor and shut it off. I could not listen to this guy anymore. First off, he talks like he's got a goddamn bag of shit in his mouth. You can't understand. He talks like he's fucking what are you fucking stuffing Jolly Ranchers in your cheeks? I can't fucking understand you, mush mouth.

So he's standing up there and he's going on and he's fucking railing on women. And I guess there's some women in the audience because at one point he's like, I see your eyes. I don't mean all women. I just mean most women. And you're like, are you fucking Yahoo serious? But one of the things that he says, and I want to talk about this. He says that women just cannot handle power like men handle power. And I started thinking, I'm like, okay, well, how is it that we handle power differently? And the only thing that come to mind is the moment a guy gets any sort of power,

the first thing that goes through his head is how can I use this power to get me laid? That's all he thinks. That's all he thinks. He may think, he may think, Tom, how do I use this power to get some more money so then I can get laid? But the laid is definitely involved in the equation somewhere. It's an L subsect two. You know what I mean? Like it's in the equation. I'm going to get laid somehow through my use of power. That's all that men think about. This guy, I love too when this guy is talking and he talks about the way that women export themselves today. Not comport themselves today. Right.

This is the same guy who is the president and founder of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, not for a new destiny. This is a man whose facility with language needs a fucking hug. This man is living proof that there are no standards for the title of reverend. Right. Nobody need to revere you, nor do you clearly need to have any kind of educational minimums there's no prerequisites for this guy right women can't handle power what are you talking about i think margaret thatcher might disagree with you yeah no kidding right well hillary rodham clinton might fucking you. Condoleezza Rice may want to argue that point, sir. There's, there's, here's the problem.

It's not that women are in power. It's that women aren't in power. There's the problem. That's exactly it. You fucking troglodyte who can't even speak and or write. Who would listen to this man? Who would sit and listen to this man speak of words that's crazy you're sitting there this at some point listening to this fucking fool of a human

being spout off at the mouth his hateful misogynist nonsense at some point wouldn't you just want to say oh this must i'm getting fucking punked. I'd be looking under the organ for Ashton Kutcher. I'd be like, why the fuck are you hiding? He's wearing a mask, right? It's like fucking Ashton Kutcher fucking meets Scooby-Doo. He pulls it off at the end. Like seriously, it's fucking ridiculous. And how could you be a woman sitting in that audience? How could you be looking at this fucking goober up there, yammer on for a while and be like, yeah, this guy speaks to me. Right.

This guy fucking insults you. And you would think that somebody who comes from a minority would actually look upon another minority, which is women. Right. Because they're treated like a minority, whether they're not. They are not. They're still treated like a minority. You would think that he would have some fucking sympathy for him. But instead, he just has fucking contempt.

fucking sympathy for him but instead he just has fucking contempt well this is the same yahoo who said uh he said something like how uh young black folks need to go back to the plantation to learn how to work oh my god this guy is fucking this is not a person to listen to like that doesn't make any sense we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord. Open hearts. So this next story is from Secular News Daily. Travesty in Tennessee. Death by faith healing gets a misdemeanor. So we've covered faith healing death stories in the past. And it's nice because the ones that we've covered recently have been in Oregon. And several of those, you know, that shit's a felony.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. In Tennessee, that shit's a fucking misdemeanor how is neglecting your child and the only excuse that you give for that neglect is your imaginary sky friend how is that now a misdemeanor would it be a misdemeanor if you shot him? And you're like, whoa, wasn't me. God pulled the trigger. What if Abraham had killed his son and nobody stayed his hand? Would it be a misdemeanor? Evidently a misdemeanor.

Fuckin' A. Absolutely. You know, they treat, look, they're very hard on crime there. This is a misdemeanor. You know, you're not cutting your lawn. Those sort of things are right in the same exact, you know, you have more cars on your driveway that aren't running. And, you know, come on. You know, in this state, that's happening a lot. That's a misdemeanor, too.

So, you know, they're really hard on the misdemeanors there. They make sure to give them a couple of months probation. Yeah, I mean. You know, because probation is where you, you know, look, you just killed your fucking kid. Sure. We got to make sure we watch you for the next few months. Now, we're not going to put you in a, you know, in a small room to make sure that you're, you know, you're not going to hurt anybody else. We're just going to let you run free.

Probation is what we'll call it. You know, run free. It's cool what we'll call it. Run free. It's cool. They got 11 months and 29 days of unsupervised because we don't want to make it onerous. What the hell does that even mean, unsupervised probation? So basically they let him go and said, go forth and sin no more. That's really what they did is they gave him a little slap on the wrist. did is they gave him a little slap on the wrist.

Right. What we should do for child neglect is, first of all, there should be no such thing as misdemeanor child neglect. Child neglect, it doesn't even make sense for there to be a misdemeanor child neglect. It really doesn't. It really doesn't. And if you're convicted of child neglect, you should just be sterilized. I don't know about that one. Now you can't have any more children to neglect.

I don't know if I'd go that far. I'm going that far. I'm ridiculous. I don't think I believe that either, but still. But still, still. No, but, you know, look, if we're going to talk about ridiculous fucking punishments for, you know, neglecting your child, that's just as ridiculous as giving somebody 11 months worth of probation for the same crime.

Look, here's the thing. You don't feed your kid. DCFS, if they come in time, will take your kid away. You don't house your kid properly, the same thing happens. You have too many, you're a fucking animal hoarder and the fucking cats

are shitting on your kid all day. They're going to take your kid away. They're going to take your kid away. And the cats also take the cats. And the cats, yeah, absolutely. And they're going to probably take more care with the cats than they will with the kid.

But that's just, you know, that's just the nature of the beast. Yeah, absolutely. And they're going to probably take more care with the cats than they will with the kid. But that's just the nature of the beast. But if you fucking don't treat your child's cancer or you treat it by pretending that there's a god and the kid dies, this is not the type of thing that DCFS shouldn't be swooping in on. Come on. They should be crawling right in there immediately. As soon as somebody finds out your kid has cancer and you're fucking treating it with apple cider vinegar and or God, then they need to come in and make sure you don't have a fucking kid anymore. Right. 11 months of probation, what does that mean? That means, oh, well, if you commit any crimes in the next 11 months,

then you'll get in real trouble. Look, she can only get pregnant and then have the kid. She's only got like a one short month worth of time that she can neglect that kid. I was going to say, she's got plenty of time to get pregnant, deliver, and neglect

a whole new person. She can create a whole new person to pray over rather than provide medical care for. So then they can give her another 11 months and she's just in a cycle. It's lose, lose, lose, lose. It's like it's always been the little women that caught the vision of giving, beginning with Jesus himself, out of their private means. Some of you little precious ones have that little grocery money, some of that little money set aside.

Assure tonight the blessings of God on your family by giving it to God and speaking that. Say it. God, this is for blessings on my family. So Cecil, this story, New York Times. We're hitting the big time when we hit New York Times. New York Times, family battle offers look inside lavish TV ministry. The image alone is worth clicking for. I love the image so much.

Oh, my gosh. So Trinity Broadcasting Network. Now, that's the same network that Pat Robertson is actually working from, I think. Is that correct? Is that right, Trinity? I don't know. TBN? Yeah.

I think so. We'll say it. Maybe it's not true. Sure, who cares? But fuck it. We'll say it. Anyway,'s not true. Sure, who cares? But fuck it. We'll say it. Anyway, it's one of those nutter channels full of nuts. And this is just absolutely insane.

The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch built a single station in the world's largest Christian network. Unbelievable wealth. I mean, the wealth that these yahoos have accumulated is like it's the stuff of like Saudi princes. It is absolutely insane. It's like Uday Hussein wealth, you know. Right. They have homes that they don't even stay at. They just stay at other homes.

They have this enormous, lavish man manner that nobody stays in except for the chauffeur most of the time it's it's just fucking insane you look at the picture and it's just it doesn't even make sense i had thoughts i'm no biblical scholar but i had thought jebus had a few things to say about poverty and riches. Right. And he was not pro-riches. I think your reading of the Bible seems accurate. It seems like it fits the rest of what everybody else thinks. The money that they have is just outrageous, and that all comes from these donations. This, you know, they have a network that tells people you will be prosperous it's

that gospel of prosperity right it's that you you give us a little bit of money now and you believe with all your heart and you're going to be prosperous but you gotta you know you gotta make that investment they're all famous for saying this they all make this connection between your donations to that church being an investment. It's not a donation. It's an investment for your future. It's an investment for your children's future. You're going to be fabulously wealthy off of this. And you would think that somebody who's going to give them money eventually would want to see some kind of fucking return. And they probably do in the sense that they count the hits and forget the misses.

So they have a – they got their income tax check back. Oh, we got a little more money than we thought. Or they got their income tax check and they got less money than they thought, but they still got their income tax check. This is fleecing of the poor. Exactly. This is the worst kind of treatment of the most vulnerable people. This is no different than get out of debt. Holy water. No, no, no, it's no different at all. It says,

this is all just a Bernie Madoff style Ponzi scheme. Absolutely. You know, except at the end of the day, it doesn't collapse because more people will just keep shitting money into the system. They just keep shitting it into the system because they think well you know the more money i shit even if here here's here's the the way they get out of jail right is at the end of the day even if it didn't work out for you it was going to but you died too early and your treasure is fucking in heaven right your treasure is always in heaven right so if Your treasure is always in heaven. Right. So if my treasure is always in heaven, even if I don't get any treasure right now, it's all fine. It's all good because I get I get this, you know, I get to live in a fucking TBN style luxury mansion in heaven.

I don't know how prosperity would work in heaven. Exactly. prosperity would work in heaven. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing about prosperity is, is so you can Lord it over other people. I mean, that's why you want to be prosperous that, and all men think it's going to get them late, but you know, they're not getting laid in heaven. Unless you're Muslim, you do though, right? Okay. Well, that's a different heaven. That's, that's one floor down, but in the, in the heaven, in the real heaven, Tom, you don't get laid, and you certainly don't get any extra money than the next guy. So great. Everybody's got a Mickey Mantle rookie card, right?

You're just like, what the fuck? That sucks. Nobody's – you know, look, my money makes me unique. It lets me buy commercially produced products that only money can buy. And that tells me that I'm an individual. So we're going to take a break and give you all the information that you need to find us on Facebook. You can send us emails.

You can find us on Twitter, Google Plus. You can even call us up and leave us a nasty, hate-filled invective on our Google Voice. We'll return in just a moment to spoil the rest of the show. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode, visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance on Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter.

Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. Help us out by retweeting and reposting our shows. You can call us and leave us a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. So, Cecil, you sent me this story. This is the saddest story today.

And it makes me hate you. Well, that and other things. That and a long, long history. A whole line of things. If I didn't need you to accomplish basic tasks, I don't know. I would have left you on the roadside years ago. I can't handle my own life. CNN.com, is the tide turning against the killing of cursed infants in Ethiopia?

Question mark. Well, I fucking hope that it is. I hope so, too. This is some Sparta-style bullshit. I mean, it is. It's like taking the kid up to the side of the mountain and like leaving them exposed for the guy. Totally is fucking awful. This story is not safe for life.

So if you don't click on it, beware. It's just it fucking hurts. fucking hurts um this is basically a story about a bunch of superstitious fuckwits in ethiopia who when babies are born and what have you and they have any kind of abnormality whatsoever the example given in the very first paragraph is when the top teeth come in before the bottom teeth shut the fuck up the child is killed because it is cursed. Curses, of course, not being real. This is infanticide. And awful.

The top teeth coming in before the bottom teeth is how you kill your kids. Could you get out of the fucking Stone Age, please? No. Could you seriously get the fuck out of the Stone Age? Just because they write on maps there be monsters here doesn't mean there's monsters there. Dumb motherfuckers. What is wrong with people that would, you know, I understand that, you know, maybe you're indoctrinated into this culture, but somebody's got to wake up eventually. Just be like, you're going to kill my baby? My child? Because

one set of teeth came in before the other set of teeth? I mean, that's the most ridiculous thing ever. I want to read. The tribe's leaders, I'm reading directly from this CNN article. The tribe's leaders were less certain of what they should do about the boy's twin brother

who had died of sickness shortly after birth. So the baby with the two front teeth that are coming in the wrong spot, they're worried about what happened with the baby's brother who's already dead. So what they did was they dug up the corpse, bound it to the living boy, paddled the canoe into the center of the river, and threw them both into the murky brown water. I suspect they weren't hoping that the dead baby was a bobber. I don't think that's what they were hoping. You make it sound bad, but they did do an investigation of a goat's intestine before they came to this decision. So it's not like it was just some rash, one-off decision. They consulted the powers that be.

They took a look at a goat's intestine. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I cannot even imagine a mother who goes through the fucking rigors and pains and challenges of childbirth with all the dangers that are inherent therein, when especially when giving birth in a fucking rural village in Ethiopia. And you go through all that and they place that baby on your chest and you're like, oh, he's so cool. I really like him.

And then you nurse this baby for a while because the teeth don't come in for a while. No, you got to be fucking attached to it before you kill it. Right. So you love the thing and you take care of it and you hold it when it cries and it is your fucking flesh and blood. But then the top teeth came in. So fuck it. You're going to tie it to a corpse and throw it in a river because the intestines told you so.

Oh, my gosh. I can't get there from here. You know, and I understand because I'm they don't have all of the benefits of, you know, Western science and Western culture and education and what have you. And I know that I'm going to get lambasted for not being sympathetic enough to that, but for fuck's sake, this is the problem with superstition. Right. This is why you have

to care about superstitious mumbo jumbo like curses and religiosity because they are all bound up together. Right. They're all part of the same I believe in witches. I believe in curses. I believe that magic can tell me

something important about how to live my life. And don't give me this bullshit about how rural tribal people shouldn't know better. I mean, come on, North Carolina. They are a rural tribal people. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. I'm high on believing So from the Huffington Post religious Archbishop Antonio Manini, Pope's representative, calls for Christians, Jews, Muslims to unite. Not to fight poverty. No.

Not for the equality of women. No. Not for the protection of the whales. Right. Not to stop the club of women. No. Not for the protection of the whales. Right. Not to stop the clubbing of fur seals. I love this protection. They would unite over that. Right.

But it's to unite against gay marriage. Absolutely. It's gay marriage. Yeah. If you're going to join forces with the people that you have historically persecuted and have persecuted you. And have murdered. Fucking warred against for hundreds of years if you're finally gonna have one issue right which unites us all in a fucking kumbaya of hate

it's got to be the gay marriage i think so when i was a kid there was a cartoon called justice league america i don't know if you saw this but it it was all the DC comic guys. And they would all come together and be like superpowers for the good. And then there was the bad group called the Legion of Doom. And the Legion of Doom is sort of what I equate this to. They've all got together. They threw up their sign into the sky that's like a homosexual with a line through it. And they're like, okay, we've got the bat signal up. Now let's figure out, you know, and then all of them sort of fly in. They sort of swoop it in their costumes.

I think you've got a few different superheroes you can choose from when you have all these different religions that come together. You can maybe have a priest called the Furious Groper. The Furious Groper. That's spectacular. Well, you know, his sidekick I I think, has to be an altar boy. We'll just call him Little Timmy and you don't want to know what his superpowers are. You know, his eyes are always downcast.

He keeps it very hush hush. Your sidekick seems sad. I don't understand. Yeah. Well, you could have a Muslim, you know, I don't know what you maybe just call him the Ayatollah. He's got big fucking swords for hands. He's lopping people's heads off and or hands.

You want to go – you want to be an equal opportunity lopper, I think. He's got a big self-destruct button. Yeah, that's good. You could have Mecca Juzilla, I think. Mecca Juzilla? That's a good one too. I just like the idea of them sort of joining forces, you know? Like, it's like, bigot powers activate.

Right, bigot powers. Form of the Ten Commandments. Oh, shit, that doesn't say anything about gays. You're fucked now. Yeah, we don't all agree on those Ten Commandments, actually. Well, can we just all agree on one of them? Can we just all agree that we don't like gays because we feel like it's icky? Right.

You know, excuse me while I have sex with a little boy. Yeah, I'm kidding. Because that's not as icky. I like that they don't unite against child sexual abuse. No, no, there's not. There's never any outcry there, right? It's un-fucking-believable. You guys want to unite to be less

tolerant of other people? That's... You are a terrible people! You're just terrible human beings. It's like the fire of their bigotry is what they sing Kumbaya around, you know? Hey, you want to roast some marshmallow around this hate?

It's very toasty. It's very hot. And Cecil, another story that you sent me. In a desire to just make me feel bad all the time. New York Times, ultra-Orthodox shun their own

for reporting child sexual abuse. That kind of says it all. This is a terrible, terrible story about a fucking asshole who sexually abused a child. And when they reported him, the community shunned the parents. Going so far.

And this was a mentally handicapped child. Like the weakest, fucking most vulnerable member of a community. Like stacking vulnerability like fucking Jenga blocks. On top of that little hat. Stacking it right there. And somebody actually had the nerve. A mother actually had the nerve to say, you know, hey, I've got a handicapped kid too who was raped by the same person

and I didn't report it. So why did you? Well, I don't know, because some people love their kids. How does that fucking even come out of your mouth? How does that come out of that fucking gaping fucking pit of death you call your mouth, you fucking idiot?

You know, like, what is she going to say to him? Like, look, hey, hey, we got a pact here. We let them fuck our kids, they let us into heaven. Don't fuck this up for us, Ezekiel. Do not fuck this up for us. What the fuck are you possibly going to say to this guy?

And, you know, you're shunning the wrong people, you idiots. You're fucking, how are you harboring the fucking criminal? How are you saying we have to protect the rights of our elders in this community to fuck our kids? How do

you even think that? Shouldn't you just be like, well, old boy gets the boot, he's out of here. You're out of our community. Cut his fucking braids off, take his little tuxedo off, and send him down the fucking road. He has to wear a baseball cap instead of the big circle hat. Yeah.

You know, that's the thing that I am always baffled by that. Wouldn't you think that you would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not upholding the standards of our community. Our community has high moral standards. Right. not upholding the standards of our community our community has high moral standards right we we hold these things as as uh important truths in our life and you're not doing a good job of upholding them right you don't get to be a part of our community anymore i don't have a problem with shunning but like you said you're shunning the wrong fucking people. It's fucking baffling.

And it's not like I also understand this idea that like, OK, well, they want to keep it in house. You know, they want to they want to meet out their own justice. But it's not like they were meeting out their own justice because this guy had already fucked somebody else's kid. And it's not like the community took him out back behind the fucking schoolyard and beat the shit out of them and buried them in a shallow grave? No. They just hide the abuse. Well, that's not handling your shit in-house, people. That's called not handling your shit.

That's called fucking dripping evil with every step. That's called free reign to fuck kids. Right. Enjoy your stay at the Hasidic community. Fucking all pedophiles. Awful goddamned human beings. Awful. Don't treat my fucking kid like an amusement park ride, asshole.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, you know, I have to imagine that most parents would agree that the kindest revenge that most parents can imagine is to report somebody who abused your kid to the police that's like the kindest thing that would go through your head right like because the rest of it involves removal of genitalia the rest of it does involve taking somebody out behind the schoolyard and killing them you know and that's and obviously most people don't do that because you don't live in a fucking vigilante society. But doing nothing is basically telling your children, hey, you're not an important part of my

life. You're not as important as my God. Yeah, you're important. You're just not as important as God, honey. So we're joined again by Matt Delahunty from The Atheist Experience. He's also the president of the Atheist Community of Austin. And he's also the host of the internet radio show, The Nonprofits. The Atheist Experience, as well as being a podcast, is also an Austin public access television cable show. It's also available on the internet.

You can watch it live. If that's not enough, he's also the founder and contributor of the counter-apologetics encyclopedia Iron Chariots and its subsidiary sites. Welcome back, Matt. You obviously said, you know, earlier in the show, you said that you were a Christian for 25 years. Um, did you have a deconversion process? You know, yes, I guess. Um, it was a really lengthy process for me. I. I was actually studying with the hopes of becoming a minister. I'd become kind of disillusioned with the tech industry and didn't want to get back into that. Had always felt that, you know, God wanted me to be a preacher and there were people in my family who were convinced, you know, if you want me to be a preacher, you know, I'm over 30 now. I got no other prospects.

I'm ready to surrender. And at the time, I had a roommate who was an atheist. And so we just never talked about religion. It was kind of an agreement. We're the best of friends. We lived together for, I don't know, 12, 13 years or so, like brothers. And it was, you know, I believed he didn't. And the agreement was, it doesn't matter. So we're not going to talk about it. But when you, as somebody who's raised as a Southern Baptist, decide to

really rededicate your life and seriously go after this mission to be a minister, seriously go after this mission to be a minister, one of the first things that you do is, I don't want my best friend to burn forever in hell, which means I needed to study specifically what I needed to say to save my best friend. And so even though he and I didn't have any discussions about this, I went out to look at atheist sites. What is it that, you know, atheists are saying? Well, you know, I had no real experience with any of this. And it was a process. There wasn't a moment. There were probably several moments, several kind of eye-opening things, especially when I'd, you know, I'd read the Bible multiple times throughout my life. And I'd come across an atheist saying, oh, the Bible says such and such or commenting on

the Elijah story or whatever. And I'd say, oh, that's not in the Bible. And it was. And that's really eye-opening because we're taught, or I was taught as a Christian that you're reading the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And now I've come to understand that with the guidance of the Holy Spirit is code for big old fucking blinders. The obvious. You know, how many I had a debate just a couple weeks ago

with Jay Lucas and it was supposed to be on does God exist? And Jay presented exactly one argument or exactly three-fourths of an argument because he never really put it in entirely an argument form. And it was the moral argument. And my rebuttal summer at the beginning of it, this should be online pretty soon,

was just, okay, Jay's argument is God has to exist, otherwise we don't live in the world that I want to live in. And that really is his moral argument. But, I mean, when I'm looking at the moral argument, and I challenge Jay on slavery because the Bible is crystal clear on slavery. And Jay comes back and says, no, the Bible doesn't advocate slavery. It regulates slavery. And I was like, well, okay, I understand that it does that. slavery. And I was like, well, okay, I understand that it does that, but you know, it does say that,

you know, these who you can enslave, how much you can pay for them, the fact that you can beat them, that they become your property forever and that you can pass them on to your kids. And then Jay was like, no, no, no. Um, you have to let him go after seven years. And that's when I realized that this guy I'm debating who has a BS in Bible, and I would say bachelors in Bible, that this guy I'm debating who has a BS in Bible, and I would say bachelor's in Bible, but BS in Bible sounds so much better, didn't really know what he was talking about. And I almost felt bad for him.

So that in the closing, I went up and said, you know, Jay's misrepresenting what's actually in the Bible. That passage about letting them go after six years or in their seventh year only applies if you're a Jew who has enslaved another Jew. Right, it doesn't count for neighboring tribes at all, right? And more than that is, ironically, in the next couple of verses after it says, hey, if you enslave another Jew, you've got to let them go after six years.

It then gives you this magical loophole so that you can make a Jew your slave forever. And that is you give them a wife. And when their time to go, you know, comes up, they have to leave, but you get to keep their wife. And so they, if they come to you and say, you know, no, I love my wife. I don't want to leave. Well, then you take them before the elders, you drive a spike through their ear, pierce their ear, and they become your slave forever. I mean, it's like, oh, you gotta, we don't want you enslaving the Jews. So you got to let them go. But here's how you can get around it.

What's the idea that you could allow for conditional or short-term slavery? How is that less evil? I mean, it's just, it's evil, but just for a shorter period of time. It's not, not evil. And it's not, not, it's not moral. It wouldn't be moral. We wouldn't pass a law that said, you know, now you can have slaves again, but you can only have them for six years. You know, that doesn't mitigate the damage in any way. It's an absurdity. The standard apologetic is that this is something about indentured servitude. The problem is, is that the Bible

specifically talks about indentured servitude in other places and in other ways. And you're absolutely right. I don't care. And the other objection, which Jay came up with as well, was, well, your perception of slavery is colored by slavery in the U.S., as if we all saw roots and that's all we know about slavery. as if we all saw roots and that's all we know about slavery. And if the Bible specifically says that they're my property forever and that I can beat them as long as they don't die within a couple days, I don't think my perception is that colored. And moreover, I don't care.

I don't care if you love your slaves and take them out to parties and buy them frilly things and you're just the nicest, coolest massa ever, if you own another human being as property, limiting their freedom, that's fucking wrong. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's almost like you're more moral than the religious. How does that work? I think it's got something to do with reason and evidence and the fact that I'm no longer willing to sacrifice my humanity. But the question that you had originally asked was about my falling away period or my epiphany to no longer be religious.

And it was a lot of stuff like that over the course of just less than two years before I over the course of just less than two years before I couldn't call myself a Christian anymore, and rapidly descended into, or I'll say ascended, identifying as an atheist. So you do this TV show, The Atheist Experience, very popular show among the atheist crowd. When did you start doing that show? The show's been on for 14 or 15 years. I've been on it for the last six or close to maybe seven now. I can't, I lose track.

I called into a show, basically somebody at work knew that I was writing about atheism and that I'd been an atheist for a couple of years. And they said, hey, have you seen this TV show on public access? And I was like, no, you know, I don't have any interest in just listening to atheists. Why would I listen to people who are going to tell me stuff I already agree with? It just kind of seemed like a waste

of time. And, uh, it happened to be the case that Jeff D, uh, lived in the same apartment complex that I did and he had put a flyer up on the mailbox. So I went out to get the mail one Sunday because I was too lazy to get it Saturday and probably for the week before. And I saw this flyer and I was like, oh, you know, I didn't get anything better to do. So I watched the show and it was really kind of intriguing because it's not just atheists sitting around, you know, preaching atheist ideas, whatever the hell that is to people. It's, it's conversation. It's, it's a call, live call and show. And I loved it. I ended up calling in either probably, I think three weeks later, I called in to ask a question, um, and then ended up at dinner after the show and then was in the studio the next week, you know, screening calls and then ended up at dinner after the show and then was in the studio the next week,

you know, screening calls and then worked behind the scenes for a little while. And then within a couple months, I did a guest spot on the show a week when Jeff couldn't make it. And it was like a couple months later, I'm the president of the organization. A couple months after that,

I'm, you know, taking over the show and the rest is history. I have to ask you, you get some real bizarre folks that call into that show. I mean, some real fucking weird dudes. I was listening to a show the other day where a guy called up, and I think you guys called him out, but he tried to pretend that he believed in a sun god i i don't know if you happen to recall the the yahoo that uh i wasn't on that show no but i i assume that you you listen to these callers are just they're just goofballs a lot of these callers that call it not all of them but a lot of the

callers that call up are just fucking goofballs. And it seems to me like they're calling up and they're trying to convert you. They're trying to teach you something. They have this idea that if only they can get it through to your head, that you're sitting there on the other end of the phone just waiting for somebody to come up with the magic answer. And here I am, the caller, and I've got the magic bullet for your atheism. And I'm going to convert this guy right over the show. And I guess what occurs to me listening to it is, how do you restrain yourself from jumping through the goddamn camera and strangling some of these dimwits? Well, I think the first thing is the

laws of physics prevent me from doing that. That does make it tougher. Also, I don't think that they're entirely wrong because I'm only interested in truth. And so if somebody actually had, you know, the argument and evidence that would convince me, then, you know, great call in. I want to know, you know, but a lot, we've dealt with a lot of callers lately who are clearly uh prank callers or pose i think the sun god guy was like straight up quoting from carlin and somebody else and so you know he wasn't for real um there were people in the past uh that we had to actually ban from the show one guy was trying to tell me how to contact the spirit world by constructing a mirror, you know, right down to the type of wood and screws.

And the fact that I needed to tie a rope around my waist and bring a friend with me so that I could hold the mirror under running water at a creek. But that this would open up the spirit world and the rope was to have my friend, you know, hold on tight so I didn't get sucked in through the mirror. was to have my friend hold on tight so I didn't get sucked in through the mirror. And I'm just thinking, I should just build the mirror small enough so that my girth can't quite fit through it. And then I realized that if we're talking about magic portals to another world,

it might not make any difference. But yeah, there's been all kinds of, there's some sincere people who really, they're not just undereducated, they've been miseducated. I had somebody email me today, there's a guy who had called in, I think from Australia, and his name may have been Dave, who was just like over the top crazy. And we didn't talk, I haven't talked to him since that i'm aware of but this guy continued having a conversation with him and i think he ended it today because dave who's a theist opposed to evolution and just doesn't understand it no matter how many times you

explained it what he said to close the argument and i have it up in front of me now because my only response was wow was um people have been wearing clothes for thousands of years why haven't our bodies evolved natural clothes that come out of our skin he did not say that he did you have no response to that there was there's a oh i have a response it's laughing you see there's a clip of the show on youtube um that's like got hundreds of thousands of views where this guy calls up and he's like, what wakes you up in the morning? And then, oh, well, we've got a God alarm clock or something. And we're going through and we're explaining very, very simple concepts and we're trying to be as simple as we can. And he's like, you know,

where do you get your energy from the energy that makes you move? And, you know, I pointed out, I think, or maybe Russell, we were both on the show that ultimately that it comes from the sun, the sun provides energy to the planet, which, you know, causes the plants to grow and we eat the plants. Well, first of all, I didn't get that far. As soon as I said, ultimately it comes from the sun. He's like, well, then why don't that far. As soon as I said, ultimately it comes from the sun. He's like, well, then why don't we die when the sun goes down? And so I think Russell explained the process by which the sun nourishes his plants

and then we eat the plants and animals and we store this energy. And Russell made the mistake, although I don't think it should be considered a mistake on his part of saying, we store this energy like a battery. That was how he was going to explain why we don't die when the sun goes down. And this guy said, well, if that's the case, then why don't I get electrocuted in the shower?

What? Did this guy not understand that the sun doesn't go away when it goes down? The sun doesn't just voip out of existence for eight or nine hours while you're sleeping every night? That's not... Those aren't my favorite calls, though. I mean, I'm kind of a masochist.

When Matt Slick called in and we had a 45-minute debate on the transcendental argument for the existence of God, I liked that because I like the deeper philosophical discussions. I like the sincere discussions that we've had with

theists, Christians in particular, who will call in and actually have an honest discussion where they ask questions and we ask questions and they try to provide answers. I don't like being the asshole who hangs up on people for arguing dishonestly, but I'll do it.

Yeah. And this actually, I think one of the things that people get down on a lot of atheists about, I know that we catch a lot of flack for this, is that people will say like you've got, if you have an attitude, some sort of attitude like a confrontational attitude or an irreverent attitude, that it's not helping. You're not helping spread the cause of atheism. But I see that you don't take any bullshit on your show. If somebody is not going to answer the question, you're just as quick to knock them right off the air. You don't take a confrontational attitude, so to speak, but you certainly don't take any bullshit.

And I just feel like you certainly have a reach and you can reach people. And I've heard people call your show that are not playing the Poe and actually do have a moment where they're like, holy shit, what have I been thinking all these years? So I think you're reaching people. I don't think that that argument really holds any water. Yeah, it's strange. I've, you know, I've been doing this for a long time and I constantly, you know, my inbox is always full. I'm, you know, even after archiving thousands of emails, I'm 315 behind again. I'm going to stay behind forever. I've given up on that, but we get, you know, I've had feedback from people, Stay behind forever.

I've given up on that. But I've had feedback from people. Pick a show and a particular call. And if it was anything that was not just dead ass boring, if there was any kind of back and forth, I will get email from people saying that that was the best call ever and the best job I've ever done. And oh my God, you were so patient. I don't know how you could be that patient.

And I will also get email from people saying that that was the worst call ever. And I was a complete asshole. Now I gave up a long time ago in any hope of trying to please everybody. And I'm my own worst critic. After the show's over, I leave. And on the drive to dinner, I'm replaying every call in my head saying, oh, you should have said this. Oh, why didn't you say that? Or, oh, you need to remember that because the way you said that might actually be good. That happens a little less often than the criticism. But when I'm on the show and taking calls, I try to be fair. I try to make sure that people are getting about as good as they're giving. If they're willing to have an honest discussion, I kept people on for 40 minutes. Back when we were doing a 90-minute show,

there's several 40-minute calls where I let them go because I thought the conversation was productive. I didn't think I was going to change their mind or they were going to change mine, but we were making points that might benefit somebody else. than I'm talking to. I mean, we had Ray Comfort on. I don't think for a minute I'm going to change his mind. Although I did get him to admit that he doesn't agree with everything in the Bible, which I thought,

and that Russell and I are delusional or stupid, which I thought was a win for both. That guy's a great rhetorician, though. I mean, really, he has his stuff together and he's a hard guy to debate. So I'm happy that you did well against him.

Yeah, you know, for a while I wanted to actually you know have a formal public debate with him but now that i've been doing more formal public debates uh race who race beneath me it's you know i hate saying that but the fact of the matter is I've had enough discussions with him. Um, and everybody knows that, you know, he's just, he it's not, I say he's incapable of being honest and honestly addressing the issues. Um, and that's not true in every case. And I don't think that he's lying. I think that his religious presuppositions keep him from addressing certain things, but on the subject of calls, I got a suggestion email just the other day that said, I think your attitude towards callers could be refined a

bit further. You never insult Christianity or show anger or hatred directly, which isn't true. So they clearly haven't watched enough shows. What gets me sometimes is the smirks and laughter while caller is talking. I know some of their arguments are simply too ridiculous to keep a straight face, but such expressions degrade your image as a good show host and might make you come off as arrogant. And I thank them for the feedback. I didn't point out that I don't mind being considered arrogant on occasion because I think I am arrogant on occasion and condescending. And it's not something that I'm particularly proud of. But ridiculous ideas are, by definition, deserving of ridicule.

That's why we gave it that label. And if I sit there stone-faced and try to seriously address a claim that shouldn't be taken seriously i lose credibility there's you know the example that i've used before is that some kids stop believing in santa because they go out and investigate and discover the truth and others stop believing because older kids on the bus made fun of them for believing and i opt for a little bit of both educate and treat people well but ridicule the ideas. It's not the person that I'm smirking or face palming over. It's what they're saying. Now, sometimes I'll be in a, you know, I don't find myself in a lot of these debates. I normally don't talk to people about

their religion. It just never comes up for me. You know, I know that you put yourself in that situation a lot. So you get into these conversations all the time. So a lot of people look to you for, I'll see a lot of callers will call you and they'll say, I've recently ran into this argument. Can you help me out with it? And I think that that's a great resource to sort of be able to turn to someone else who has obviously has a really great grasp on logic to help them work through an argument. But one argument that always kind of stumps me, and maybe you can do a little coaching here. You can help me out with an argument. There's always the concept of when people say, well, you don't believe in – you want evidence for God.

Without evidence for God, you're not going to believe. But what about love? Love is an intangible thing you're not going to believe. But what about love? Love is an intangible thing that we all seem to believe in. What about that? What about that? The love thing, it's usually phrased a little different than I think you did, which was that you can't prove love, which actually you can. Because love is a label that we put on a wide variety of human actions.

It's not something that exists. Love is like every other emotion, like every other thought. It's just a brain state. It is a chemical brain state. And with an EEG, you can actually go in and find out a little bit about what are people experiencing with love. It seems people are like, oh, this diminishes it. You're turning everything into, you know, chemicals and electrical interaction in the brain.

But love is so much more than that. No, it's fucking not. It's not. And I can, you know, how do you know that your wife loves you? Well, I don't know. Maybe she's a psychopath who's really, really good at acting. I don't know in the for sure sense that these people want. But I know in any reasonable sense, and by the way, we're kind of getting into the territory of what qualifies as knowledge.

And I think absolute certainty is a red herring outside of just a couple of things that I won't bore everybody by going into. And so all the things that I talk about that I know, you know, I know this, I know that I know to a reasonable degree of certainty that my wife loves me. I know that I love her. I don't know how much, I don't even know how to necessarily quantify it. But when I see a mother, you were so good at it that when we see a mother with a new baby, it's obvious. We are watching an expression of love. It's detectable. It may even be, I would imagine that it's detectable by EEG, but we're putting a label on that. And it's one category of love, romantic love, love a parent has for their kid, the love that siblings have, the love you have for a friend. These things exist as brain states, but we put the labels on the actions and the activities. And it's the reason that we can look at some parent who's suffering from some mental disorder who doesn't connect to their kid. So when their kid goes missing and they're on the news, there are people who can spot right away, this person's deranged. They're not acting the way

somebody would act if their kid was actually missing, and they're probably responsible for it. The fact that we can't quantify it, and we may be able to at some point, it doesn't matter. No, at a minimum, if you're saying, well, God is roughly the equivalent in the space of epistemology to love, I got to call bullshit because I can point to love all over there and I can experience love and it's ubiquitous and everything else. This God thing that people claim is ubiquitous and experiential, I've followed the instructions that people have offered guarantee that I would experience God and did not. So clearly there's a flaw in their methodology. One of those two things is somewhat demonstrable and the other one is not at all. Yeah, but Matt, I mean, you didn't open your heart, you know, you got to open your heart

to Jesus and all that nonsense and then you'll experience it, and then you'll experience that grand, that hole in yourself that we were talking about earlier, that all atheists must, by definition, according to the nuts, experience. Then that would be filled and you would be complete. I mean, certainly you can understand that. I want to say that it's a good thing that you guys are on my side and being funny. There are a few things that theists can say. I mean, I don't know if you've seen Jeff D. when somebody talks about the threat of hell and how he loses his shit. But there are a few things that can piss me off faster.

There's a handful of things. One, treat me like an idiot and you will suffer. The second one is to be so deluded. There's nothing more arrogant and condescending than somebody saying to me without knowing anything about me or who I was or what I actually went through that I didn't try hard enough. I don't know how hard other people tried. I don't know how much time they spent on their knees in prayer. I don't know how much time

they spent pleading for some sort of information from God, but anybody who spent more time and did more than me, good for them. But when there's a fucking million pointless, stupid people who are running around claiming that they have had this experience and if only I'd opened my heart after the shit that I actually went through, fuck you. Any God who wants me to do more is not worth even finding. Right. No kidding, man. I was going to go back to something that you said about how there are certain theists who will make the argument that, well, you know, atheism and the explanations. As soon as you start to give an explanation, you know, well, what about this? Well, you know, you can actually look at the chemical patterns in the brain and you can see how love works and you can see that stuff on an EEG and you can image that in a functional MRI scanner. And, you know, you start to come up with answers for these things and it's like, well, then, then you come up to the, the argument and I've heard

it and I'm sure you've heard it many more times that, you know, that's reductionist, that you're, that you're diminishing. And you, you touched on this briefly that you're diminishing through reductionism. And, uh, the first thing that occurs to me is like, well, you say diminishing. I'm saying explaining. We're not reducing something's importance in our life by explaining how that thing works. My car is not less important to my daily activities because I understand that it uses an internal combustion engine to get me from point A to point B rather than, you know, pixie dust and hope. So that argument just, it's just a wish fulfillment, right? Well, the claim that someone is just being reductionist in their explanation,

that is actually much worse than anything that any of us who have engaged in some reductionism have done. Because like you pointed out, knowing what's going on in my brain, even if I knew and understood it completely, doesn't diminish in any way what I experience. Knowing that a flower is ultimately made up of specific chemicals and atoms doesn't diminish how pretty it is, or in my case, how wilted and dying it is. You know, if, if that's what's happening, it's, this is about, they're trying to add something to the truth. And we're saying the truth alone is enough. It doesn't change. The garden doesn't become prettier because there's magical pixies

that are going in and fertilizing it every night with their shit. All right, so Matt, it was wonderful having you on. Matt, you obviously have your hand in a few podcasts as well as you know some people who have some podcasts.

So could you tell our listeners where to find your show, The Atheist Experience, as well as the other podcasts? Absolutely. You can watch The Atheist Experience live as it streams every Sunday from 4.30 to 5.30. You can go to atheist-experience.com for more information about that show. Nonprofits is nonprofitsradio.com. That's P-R-O-P-H-E-T-S because we're punny guys. And we should be back live with the new nonprofits this coming Saturday, whatever the hell date it is. But more importantly, because my wife is just generally awesome, there's the Godless Bitches podcast, which is also available. You can find all of this starting with the Atheist Community of Austin, which is

atheist-community.org. Thanks so much for coming on, Matt. We really appreciate it. So, Tom, we got a few emails this time. We got one from Hannah. Hannah sends us an email with Tim Minchin. I think that's how you say his name. He's a singer and a comedian from the UK. how you say his name? He's a singer and a comedian from the UK. And there's a video that she attached that was Tim mentioned doing this zombie Jesus, Woody Allen zombie Jesus. It's a funny sort of

comic song that he wrote that's actually really great. I'm going to post it on this episode. So if you want to see it, you can go to our site and click on the YouTube link and watch the video. But it's pretty funny. And then she also likes some of the clips that we use in the show, which is awesome. Because they're awesome clips. I mean, come on. Yeah. Of course you will.

Michelle Bachman's is awesome, man. Michelle Bachman's is the best. My favorite is when she's like, you're a Jehovah God. Jehovah God. I love that. That's the best one. What is when she's like, you're a Jehovah God. Jehovah God. I love that. That's the best one. What is that? I don't know.

You're a God. You're a Jehovah God. I just see her like raising her shoulders when she says Jehovah. So it's like Jehovah God. Jehovah God. Like I just, I don't know. Like that's how I envision it. So, you know, she ran a nearly flawless campaign.

It turns out. Nearly flawless. Except for the not getting fucking elected. Yeah, right. Right. That was, that was really elected. Yeah, right, right. That was really the only downfall of your campaign. We got a letter from Dennis, or shall I say Denis, from France. From France, who's a skeptard, a self-proclaimed skeptard.

I think you're our first French listener, Denis. He's the listener du jour. You can tell we don't get out much. Really, we don't. Although I will say, Denis, that I look on iTunes France and I see zero fucking ratings. I'm not saying, Denis. I'm just saying. And I'd be a little careful because you know Cecil does go to France every couple of years. Yeah every couple of years I make

my way to Paris and I eat a fucking shit ton of baguettes and eclairs and they have to roll me into the Seine and just float down there like a fucking bobber. You got nothing to worry about from me. I'm not leaving the country anytime soon. I won't let him anymore. No, the North Carolinians love me too much, turns out.

So John sends us a message. John's from New Zealand and talks in this email, Tom, about the conversion. Sometimes people argue back and forth. There's an argument all the time between atheists and Christians

and they wind up converting people. And sometimes our attitudes can push people away and, as he says, make them so that they don't want to – how do we get more people to our side basically is what he says. Yeah, I don't know that I'm really that interested in gathering support or converting people to – atheism isn't something you can convert to. You can't become a convert to a lack of belief in gods and goddesses. I don't think that that's, that's something that I don't even think that's something you should be interested in doing. If people have a, you know, personally held belief, um, fine, who gives a shit? It's not relevant. You know, as long as they're not as they're not throwing babies in the fucking pond and they're not faith healing and voting against gays and just being generally awful fucking human beings, then who gives a shit? Who cares? When you're an atheist, you're not – I don't know that you're trying to convert people more so that you're just trying to say I only accept evidence as a way in which to believe how my world works.

You need to present evidence to show me counter how the world works if you think there is a god. If you can't produce this evidence, maybe you would be better served to be thinking the exact same thing that I am. But that doesn't necessarily mean I want to try to convert them. I just want them to see logic and evidence as its own reward. Right, and how are you going to have an argument with somebody who doesn't value logic and use logic to get them there? Dave sends an email from the UK. All we got is nobody sends us emails from the United States anymore, by the way, Tom.

We're blocked. They don't like us. We've been blocked. That's tough. So it's nice to get an email from across the pond. And in his email, he mentions Matt, who was just on our show. Bam. We're like fucking psychics.

He also asked if we despair of living in the United States and asked if our politicians ever talk about real issues. Yes and no. Yeah. Yes, we do despair. No, they don't ever talk about real issues. When they do talk about real issues, that always gets fucking ground down in legislation so nothing happens. Right. That's our process.

That's the process. There it is. That's why we are fucked. Dusty sends an email, and I just want to read the last bit here. I guess enjoyed some of Everyone's a Critic, which is nice. Thanks for listening to some of those.

Found Thomas in the Bible, if Thomas is still listening. Hi, Thomas. Thomas was great to have on the show. He's a very good podcast, so if you haven't listened to Thomas in the Bible yet, it's funny and clever. And the guy is hilarious. But at the end of the email, he says, anyway, been posting links occasionally on your Facebook page. Although you probably have seen or heard most of the stories.

Keep the good work, Tom, and give Cecil the help with the tech side. Hey, Cecil, do you want my help with the tech side? Only if I would want my computer to light on fire. You've got to understand, Dusty, I work in an industry that is afraid of technology. We are afraid of change. You're still on like a Windows 95 computer. we have most of our employees working windows 98 and doing it poorly windows 98 what is that fucking like what do you do on windows 98 when when one of our computers breaks we actually can't replace it with a new computer we have to get old computers from companies that have gone out of business and wipe, I'm not even kidding, and fucking wipe their hard drives.

Because if we install a computer that's too new, it won't work with our fucking ancient system. So you don't want, nobody wants my help with the tech side. The only help you get is that I will copy and paste into Facebook. Computer

was made in Babylon. So we want to thank Matt from the Atheist Experience for coming on and really just having – I had a great time talking to him. He's a real smart guy. And if you get a chance, come on over to the Atheist Experience and take a look. They crushed us fucking underfoot this year on that Atheist.com poll. In one day. In one fucking day, they crushed us underfoot. So maybe next year, hopefully, Matt will do it early.

Crush us early. Kill our hopes early, Matt, so we don't feel like we can maybe win it. Don't let me dream. Dreaming only makes it hurt worse. But we want to thank Matt for coming on. Absolutely. Great guy. Dreaming only makes it hurt worse. But we want to thank Matt for coming on. Absolutely. Great guy.

And as usual, we will finish and wrap up the show with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and Pseudo-Quasi-Alternative, Acupunctuating, Pressurized, Stereogram, Pyramidal, Free Energy, Healing, Water, Downward Spiral, Brain Dead,, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues. Temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Mata nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Outro Music