The Jordan Harbinger Show - 186: David Smalley | Why You Should Challenge Your Beliefs

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

David Smalley (@davidcsmalley) is an actor, comedian, and host of the Dogma Debate podcast, in which he -- as an atheist -- regularly discusses religion and politics with preachers, pastors, comedians, and people who hold different world views. What We Discuss with David Smalley: How David Smalley went from spiritual believer to secular atheist. Why regularly challenging your own beliefs helps inoculate you against manipulation by others. The tactics car dealers and clergy use to corral people into compliance. What happens when atheists cling to faulty beliefs with the same fervor once reserved for their disavowed religions. How to debate in a way that might actually change someone's mind rather than angering them to the point of doubling down on their initial position. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/186. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! One's a comedian, one's a radio/TV host. Together they bring you The SDR Show -- a no-apologies, not politically correct, not for the faint of heart show that somehow blends the classic energy of a morning radio show into the new era of digital entertainment. Listen to The SDR Show here or where your ears enjoy podcasts most! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. I'm always impressed with people who can form a great argument, seldom lose their cool, and cause their opponents to paint themselves into a corner time and time again. Today's guest is no politician and certainly no angel. He's actually a comedian and talk show host in the field of religion or atheism to be specific. David Smalley is second to none when it comes to challenging belief structures and knows his opponent's counter arguments as well or better than they do. He's built a career combining comedy, interviewing, and challenging beliefs in bad thinking. On today's show, we dive into David's use of persuasion, rhetorical devices, and empathetic conversation to develop dialogue with others who have opposing views and entrenched beliefs. This episode will definitely ruffle some feathers. But if you find yourself getting angry or irritated by the content of David's arguments, I strongly encourage you to think about why and be respectful in your disagreement, and of course, ideally also in my inbox if you don't mind.

mind. If you want to know how I managed to book great people for the show and manage my personal and professional relationships, I've got a course about this. It's totally free. It's what I wish I knew 20 years ago, and it's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. All right, here's David Smalley. You've made a whole career on like challenging bad thinking and religious claims, well, and comedy, of course, in acting. That's a fascinating mixture. I kind of wondered, like, why'd you get into this? because you could have just been like, eh, comedy's better, more fun. Why is this important to you?

I started in podcasting because I was listening to radio. I was listening to Christian podcast. I would call in to Christian shows and ask them questions. Because I was still sort of going on my journey. Like, I started as a believer. And I was like sitting down with theology professors, pastors, preachers,

lay Christians who were in congregations of different churches. And I go, hey, is Jesus the son of God? Or is he's the same as God? And a guy would give me an answer and show me scripture and prove it. And then I would switch over and go talk to another friend of mine who went to a different church. And he'd be like, no, no, no. It's definitely this instead.

And he would show me scriptures to prove it. And I was like, you guys can prove anything you want with this book. Yeah. And so I started listening to Christian radio. I love listening to more conservative the better because I wanted to hear what the other side was saying, really. I didn't want to sit here and make arguments against something that I didn't really understand. It didn't make any sense. I had to understand what they were saying.

So I started listening to Christian podcasts. And I couldn't call into radio stations. a lot of times you get a busy signal or you couldn't get through. Sure. even if it was live internet radio, they maybe had 40 people listening at the time. And this was a long time ago. This was back when you started your podcast. That's how long ago it was. Oh, my gosh. And so I would call in and then I got to where I was recording my conversations with them because I would ask them a question and they wouldn't really be able to answer me. And then they would just hang up on me. Or, and then they would edit it out. They would shut the show down, edited out. And I would listen to the final podcast. And my question wouldn't even be in there. Oh. And I was like, wait a minute. They're trying to shift this narrative like they weren't challenged with that. And so I started recording, after this happened several times, I started recording my conversations

with them, sort of like to be like, well, I'll go comment on their blog and be like, here's the clip of what you cut out of the show. So there are nine people would see it. And we could get into a debate online. Yeah. That's really the original plan. On top of that, I had dogma debate as a forum where I was just posting an atheist argument as a challenge, you'd be like, guys, here's what, this is something that doesn't make sense

to me in the Bible? What's the Christian answer to this? And almost every situation on other websites that I saw, either Christians were dogpiling atheists making fun of them, calling them names, or atheists were ripping on Christians going, you guys are stupid, it's Santa Claus for grown-ups, you're ridiculous. And I didn't see a lot of productivity. So I made my, I made a point that my platform was going to be a safe place for people to disagree, get passionate, But let's not result in name calling. And so when someone would do something really nasty or leave a nasty comment, I would leave it there. I wouldn't delete it.

I would leave it there, but I as the moderator would comment and go, do you think this is the best way to get your point across? And I was imploring the Socratic method to other atheists going, if you're just going to be an ass, what do you think is going to open the door for them to want to listen to you? And it became a really teachable moment. So the blog on its own ended up blowing up getting really popular. So I started posting the audio clips of me talking to these other Christians on their podcast on my show. And I was like, why don't I just record conversations with Christians?

Sure. It'd be way, cut out the middle man and just have them in studio. And that's how it was born. So I've been doing it for seven years now. Yeah, that's a long time. Did you grow up religious? Did I miss that? I did.

Yeah. You must have, right? Because otherwise it's like, geez, how much passion can you muster for something like this? I didn't, it wasn't, my mom wasn't like overbearing with it. I'll say she was about one thing, one thing that sticks out to me. and I've said this in a couple of interviews, so she already doesn't like that I talk about it. I was trying to see the good in just about anything.

And I remember I was in the bathroom. I forgot what I was doing, but I was thinking, what if we could get to, I was like five, four maybe. And I thought, what if we could get to demons while they were babies and teach them that being a demon is not the right way to go? And maybe while they're still innocent, We could help them. And then I thought, no grown-up is going to be okay with contacting demons.

I thought, unless they're cute. So I ran out of the bathroom. I went, Mom, do you think baby demons are cute? Because I'm trying to save the world at four or five years old. She grabbed me, walked me to the bathroom, and stuck a bar of soap in my mouth. And literally washed my mouth out with soap and water for saying, do you think baby demons are cute? That's crazy. And so I remember she was afraid that the devil had possessed me and all this other stuff.

She wasn't normally super fundamentalist like that, but there are a few things that really weird her out. Like this number 666 freaks her out, even though it's a mistake. The actual number in the Bible is 616. Most people don't know that. They think it's 666. Yeah, I never heard of that. If I'm ever on a quiz show and they ask me that, I'm going to answer 666 because that's what they think. The real one is 616, by the way.

But that part really stuck with me, I think. I think that may be a reason why I'm like, even just believing stuff can have negative ramifications. People are always like, why do you care what other people believe? Let's leave them alone. Look, if you believe that a virgin gave birth and a guy died, came back to life and floated up to the sky, you might also believe that that Nigerian prince really needs your bank account. You might really believe that the psychic medium down the streets contacting your nana, and you're going to fork over money. You might really believe that this crystal healer is going to wave some rocks.

around your face, you pay them $100 and you go away feeling better, or some sort of healer somewhere is going to ding bells around you and this therapy is going to make you suddenly feel better. And you're shelling out money. I mean, I had a woman in studio right here one day who paid $100 for a stick because someone told her it was a magic wand. I'm definitely going to talk about that exact episode because I heard that and I remember thinking this is, that was actually maybe the first episode I listened to of your show. Oh, okay.

And I was like, I can't wait to see this because the spoiler alert, the premises was this woman was like, I can feel the energy from crystals. And you're like, cool, I've got a bunch of rocks and you have a bunch of your crystals. And we're going to blindfold you and see if you can tell the difference. Absolutely. And I'm not going to surprise anyone with the results of that. But I'll let you tell it in a minute. One thing that I'm curious about. So you said, yeah, if you believe this and maybe you believe in Nigerian Prince wants your money. You can just be taken advantage of easier. And I care about your stability and mental state. So I think you should be believing as as many true things as possible. That's it. I think that

that's a good point. And I noticed that a lot of times, and this isn't universal, I know tons of religious people that are super nice, smart, intelligent, whatever, of course. So I want to throw that caveat in here so people aren't like, Jordan thinks all this religious listeners are dumb on subscribe, one star. You know, what I have

noticed is often when I see a negative argument that kind of lacks cohesion and isn't well thought out, or somebody like puts words in my mouth and then proceeds to like skewer that strong. man, I'll often go, okay, you know, I'll have this conversation with you just to see what's going on. And like eight times out of ten, maybe six, seven times out of ten, it'll be like, well, you know,

I'm Christian and did it. And I go, I'm starting to think, is there a correlation? And I guess this is a question for you. In your experience, is there a correlation between people who have generally nonsensical arguments or like believe in these weird ground truths about like all kinds of nonsensical things? and then religious belief. Because I've started to notice that, and some of that's probably confirmation bias on my part.

But I noticed that there are people that have, like, a certain set of assumptions. And I go, I wonder if this person would have that same set of assumptions if they didn't also believe in, like, all of this very metaphysical, religious, kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Spiritual isn't even the right word. Like, literally, like, the fairy tale version of the Bible,

where everything is taken literally the talking donkey, that we mentioned on your show. I always wonder if they would have that same set of assumptions if they were like purely rational or at least more rational. Well, this is part of the conversation where we have to do that not all disclaimer. And let me just run through it. I know plenty of Christians who are really smart people

who are skeptical of other things and don't get taken advantage of in any situation. Right. The problem is a lot of people think they are that person, but they allow themselves to get taken advantage of without realizing it, right? There are also atheists who believe they can contact

contact the dead, who believe they can control rainbows, who are flat earthers, I hear from them in my inbox. Yeah. They exist. It's not the norm, though. Most of what you're saying tends to be the case. So we're talking about a bell curve, generally speaking, three or four deviations outside the norm. Yeah, there's going to be that thing. But the vast majority, you're pretty on point.

It's simply because once you challenge that ultimate authority and go, I don't know that there is a God, I don't think I believe that. I don't have enough evidence for that. And you start to back out of that and ask for evidence. Then you start to go, maybe I need to do this in other areas of my life. Yeah, exactly. And then that starts to happen. And you start to ask, when a car salesman walks up and says something to you, like, oh, this thing is da-da-da-da.

Can you show me the paper? Oh, this thing's never been in an accident. I had that recently because I recently wrecked my car and was shopping for a car. I walked up and I said, ever been in an accident? The guy goes, nope, never been in an accident. I said, can I see the car fax? He goes, yeah, yeah, they're printed. They're in the car.

I said, okay, and I grabbed it, and most people hear that, hear that he has evidence and don't question it. I flipped through in red line by line, and this certain car had been rear-ended. There was no frame damage, but it said in the car fax it was in a rear-ended, it was rear-ended at a stoplight. I was like, this has been in an accident. He goes, huh? I don't even think he knew he was lying to me. He wasn't being malicious. He just had been taught by his supervisors, no accidents.

This is fine. It couldn't possibly be a certified pre-owned vehicle if it had been in an accident. Right. It takes one flip. It was on the top of page two, and there it was. My atheism, my skepticism makes me dive a little deeper. And I'm sure you know about these. There are a lot of, like we talked about social engineering on my show, and you were talking

about that. Card salesmen get trained in how to manipulate the way you think. Every salesman does, to be fair. But especially the cars, guys, you know what they'll do when they get ready, when they want to show you the car? They'll start talking and then walk away from you. You will naturally follow. So you can hear. So you become the follower in the situation. When you get in the car and you're driving, you feel like you're in control. What do they say? Turn right here. Turn right here. Make a left here. Turn right here. Let's pull in right here. Let's pull over. Let's take a look at the car. The idea is they're conditioning you to do exactly what the salesman says line by line by line. So when he says sign here, you do it.

I never even thought about that being a compliance ladder. No. Oh, absolutely. The whole thing is a compliance ladder. The same thing is true when they look at your car to see how much they're going to give you for it. it's, I don't know about that. That's not really, that's not really a popular color. It may be the most popular color. It doesn't matter. He wants to make you feel like your stuff is devalued and his stuff is super amazing. And there's all these little manipulative tricks. Knowing these tricks, I like to throw wrenches in it.

I do it on purpose. I will, you know, the guy will tell me to turn right and I'll go straight to the light. I told you to make it right. Yeah, I was going to say, I want to test. I'll go, oh, I'm sorry. First I'll play dumb. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't, I didn't hear you say that.

And I, okay, make it right. right right here. You know what? I'm going to go left. I'm going to pull into this parking lot real quick. Oh, I need you to make it right. You know what? Hold on just a second for me, bud. And I try to be nice the whole time. Sometimes I let them off the hook and I tell them I know what they're doing. And other times I just keep playing with them because it's fun. Yeah, sure. It sounds fun, actually. The connection to religion is that when you've been told that that is a man of God, he's special. He has powers you're not allowed to have. You have to give money over because the godly man said so. God's watching you. So your behaviors are duress-based.

not ethic-based, right? You think it's ethical, but you're being good because daddy's watching, right? So you've got this series of events in a certain way you're believing, a certain way you're behaving, that when someone else shows up and says, it's never been in an accident,

and he's wearing a tie, and he speaks with that confidence, and he's got that charisma, you have been conditioned in your religion to believe the smart, attractive, soft-spoken guy, so you do it, or well-spoken guy. And so you're more likely,

I'm firmly believing, you're more likely to get taken advantage of quicker if you have a preconceived religious belief. That's funny. This reminds me of, I interviewed this guy who escaped from North Korea, and he's about, and he's 24 now. So he escaped when he was 17, and he was talking about buying a car. And he got raked over the coals because he trusted everything that the sales guy said just at face value, you know, completely. And I thought, oh, it's because he's never had to deal with like a complex financial transaction.

And part of that was true. The other part of it is he was raised in an absolute compliance totalitarian, the most totalitarian regime. Probably that's ever existed in the world, honestly. Yeah? Maybe, maybe, yeah, probably. Yeah. You want to compare those of the Nazis, but maybe. Yeah, maybe not, not like an actual concentration camp.

Sure. For sure, the most totalitarian regime in terms of like a government. Sure. Maybe not the same sort of prison situation, but damn close, right? really close to it. The mindset for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. So the most, yeah, totalitarian regime outside of an actual prison camp, probably. And I hear they have those, by the way. They do have those. They have concentration camps there, too. But he had been through these, and he believed everything that those guys had said, and he had to learn how to, like, question authority at all.

And you know, it's interesting. He became religious the second he got to China. And I hadn't thought about why. I mean, he said he had this epiphany and all the stuff. I have this half-baked, potentially theory that people who are, uh, come from an extreme situation of belief like that will fall into another situation like that to replace that, that feeling of the beliefs. Is that a thing that you've observed? Absolutely. And atheists do it too. Yes. Yeah. Here's where it gets a tad political. If it makes you uncomfortable, we can back out of it. No, it's okay. But I know so many atheists and I've seen them do this. I've seen them leave a religion, be conditioned to believe, overpower that, ask questions, not find the evidence they thought they were going to find,

and give up on their belief, and celebrate their skepticism, and then begin to act in a way that is religious again for whatever political movement they've chosen, whether it's libertarianism or extreme leftists, whatever it is. These people who demanded evidence and said everybody has a right to speak at the table 10, 15 years ago when atheists weren't invited to the prayer breakfast, and atheists weren't invited to the interfaith meetings, and atheists weren't allowed to give an invocation, a secular invocation or whatever. They were like, we deserve a seat at the table, even though we're the least popular view.

And that's what we built the atheist community on. And then a whole extreme left-wing branch of those atheists started breaking off, getting a little more control because we did. We started to be recognized. Obama started inviting atheists to interfaith meetings and prayer breakfast. Atheists all over the country started doing secular invocations at their city council meetings. And whenever there was some sort of Jesus invocation or specific Muslim invocation, atheists would show up and demonstrate by sitting down and refusing to stand for whatever God was being invoked.

This idea that it needs to include everyone. And a secular invocation includes everyone. It's about the people. It's about progress. We're not going to pick one particular God to pray to because there are people in that town that don't believe that. They're paying for you to be there. It's not fair to use their tax dollars in that way. And so we built this idea on everybody gets a seat at the table, even if we disagree with them when their views are unpopular.

But as soon as this extreme left-wing version of our liberal views got some clout, they started going, oh, now we, hmm, taste that power. Yeah. You're not allowed to speak. you're not allowed to speak, you're not welcome at the table. And if you show up, we're going to throw rocks. Yeah. We're going to spray you. We're going to beat you with shields. Okay, there's a group of conservatives marching, a young conservative march or young Republicans marching in Oregon. They can just call them fascists. They can just call them right-wing Nazis or neo-not. They just label them whatever. And then like sheep, all that they just follow and show up and blackclad mask

Let's destroy them because we're doing something good. We're ridding the world of evil. Stop and realize that you're acting religious again. Those guys are allowed to march. Even if they are racists, they're allowed to exist and be disgusting people. We've got to battle those ideas in the public sphere, not with literal rocks and gas canisters and shields. You know what I mean? We've got to address it with the public and with voting and with other ways, because otherwise you're just,

you're treating this like a third world country and you're beating people with sticks and rocks and it's insane. It is. To the point that some guys were showing up with like Antifa or Black Block supporters who look like me and were getting attacked by their own people because they thought they were racist

because they had shaved heads. Oh geez. It is insane. It is insane. Fighting each other saying stop your performative bullshit and stop compromising. There is no compromise. We're destroying them. It's very, very, a war like mindset, and the vast majority of these people are secular. They are atheists who said

they were over religion, and what's dangerous about it, Jordan, is they honestly think they have overcome religious belief, so they think they're immune to it. They think there's no way I could be tricked. That's more dangerous somehow. It is, because now what they don't even realize, and I've been attacked by these same folks on social media, I can tell you now, man, when someone goes, attack David, he's part of a secret Nazi group. I'm going. It's so secret even you don't know about it. Yeah, it's pretty damn secret.

It's got to be. People who were my listeners, people who I know are skeptical thinkers who came out of religious households and became atheists, are just believing it and going, well, I'm canceling. I'm not going to subscribe. I'm not going to support this Nazi. And I'm going, what happened to you asking for evidence? Yeah. Because that's how you built your life, is requesting evidence and being a skeptic.

how are you falling back into this religious mindset? So yeah, it's not only the religious people who can do that, it's also people who are formally religious, leave that behind, and then fall back into religious thinking without realizing they're a part of another religion. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, David Smalley. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard,

visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all the latest episodes in your podcast player as they are released so you don't miss a single thing from the show. And now back to our show with David Smalley. I see this at the micro level, too.

That was a much more intelligent sort of version of what I was going to, the example that I have. There's a friend in particular where she left the Jehovah's Witnesses. And now she's like, oh, well, that's all a bunch of BS. but you should see this spirits I can write and the spirits are telling me what to write or like, oh, there's a psychic healing thing. And I was just like, there's something where when you are forced as a kid, maybe there's something.

When you are forced as a kid to believe things that really your mind knows don't make sense. You just then don't develop maybe the ability or the habit of questioning. I would say habit over ability. I think habit is. I think everybody's got the ability. and my friend Pete Begozhen wrote in his book that some people just aren't welcome at the adult table. He's like, if you can't even fathom that you might be wrong, you don't belong at the adult table. And I say, send me those people.

Because I'll sit with them and I think they are. I think that I haven't said this often. It's only been one time. And when I was actually talking with her before the show or during, yeah, before this show. And she was like, she wanted to talk about the ex-gay person that I had on my show. Oh, you're talking about that? Yeah. Just very briefly.

just like two seconds in. And she was asking me about him. She's asked me about him. And I remember saying before that show, I was like, this is a rescue mission. Let's give a little context. Because I heard that one, too. We listened together. And for me, that was heartbreaking because can you give us the premise?

I mean, it was this gay Christian guy. But I was just like, wow. He's clearly gay. He's so, oh, 100%. Yeah. He's so gay. Yeah. But he said he hadn't had a sexual attraction to a man for 28 days.

Which is like, you know, come on. And he's like, believe me, I've tried. tried. Okay. Because she mentioned that to me, I told her. I was like, I put a reminder in my phone tonight to go back and find him and do an update and have him back on my show. Yeah. Because I'm, fascinated. I want to know where he is and if he's gotten the support he needs. Because I think that's all it is. And that's why I'm not nasty to these people. That's why I'm not mean to them. I think they are victims. He certainly was. Absolutely he is. I think most of the fundamentalist Christians I have on my show are, have been victimized in some way. Some people.

has been taken from them and they've been convinced to believe this lie and I want to help them. I'm not, I don't want to make fun of them. I don't want to beat them up for it. I honestly think I look at it as a rescue mission. So I want to save them from it. And you don't save people from stuff by punching them in the face. Right. Right. And so these guys, let's say these guys were racist and they're marching in the streets. Do you think punching them is going to make them rethink their ideas? Like, they're going to, it's going to make them want to punch you back or kill people. Like they have been brainwashed into thinking so. Somehow that the white race is superior.

I don't know why they're that damn excited that all the fun got sucked out of our DNA. That is difficult for us to clap and dance at the same time. And they think we're special somehow. I don't get it. But somehow they've been brainwashed. So they're victims of thinking this. So treat them like that and go, look, we can fix this problem instead of beating them up. Like, that's why the whole punch-a-nazzi thing is just ridiculous.

I was thinking of that exact same thing. I was, you know, everyone loves that video. And there is something, of course, that's always satisfying. about seeing somebody you really don't like get punched. But all that did was go, look, see, we're right about all these idiots. Look at him. They're punching him. They're sucker punching him.

We knew this people were. Yeah, then it became a free speech thing and you're not allowed to say, whatever. So this gay guy came on the show and says that he's ex-gay and that he hadn't had an attraction in 28 days. And I, you probably heard it in my voice. I was incredibly heartbroken for the vast majority of the show. He said the attraction went away because he asked God to take it away. And now it's gone forever.

He's sure of it. Right. Which means we know how biology works. Right, of course. He's definitely attracted to people. He's suppressing it. Sure. He's lonely.

And there's a reason why LGBT suicides are much higher than folks who are not gay, straight, or lesbian or whatever. Or trans. And that's the thing. Is it our society that's doing it? Is it whatever's making them gay that's doing it? We don't, we're still, we don't know, but we're certainly not helping. If you already feel less than, if your religion has told you that you're broken, if your mom and dad have kicked you out or refused to pay for college or refuse to help you with bills or disowned you because you're attracted to the same sex.

And then somebody else comes along and goes, you know, if you weren't gay, you could have this job. Or you know, if you weren't gay, you could have this. And you just, you feel broken and you start to hate yourself. Sure. You start to think that you somehow did something, because it's never God's fault. You did something that made God put this on you. Like when the Pharaoh wouldn't let the Jews out of Egypt, it's because God hardened his heart. And when I challenged him, we go, why didn't God just unhardened the Pharaoh's heart?

So we'd let him go. No, it's because the Pharaoh did something to deserve having his heart hardened. So he held all these people's slaves. And then in order to convince him to not do that, God went around killing the firstborn of everybody in the village until the Pharaoh finally let the people go. And the murdering of all those kids, that's the miracle of the Passover that the Jews celebrate, by the way. That's this wonderful thing we're all supposed to celebrate in the Jewish tradition. It's horrific. It's disgusting.

Yeah, that's how we dealt with it. So whenever I bring those stories up and I connect them and I go, what do you think you did as a gay person? person to be for God to do this to you. And why would you worship a God that would torture you like this and why? That episode was really difficult. It was hard. I felt so bad for the guy the whole time. I mean, he basically had accepted and we'll link to it in the show notes because I think it's a really good one. Are all your episodes available or do you like they time, they sort of expire? Because of my deal with podcast one, after 60 days, they go behind the thing. But they can get it on my Patreon. Yeah. It's a little more cost effective. But I also have the ability to take shows and

rear them as. Well, we'll link to it in the show notes. And honestly, I mean, I mean, you can support a Patreon. It's like a, what is this? There's a dollar one and there's a five dollar. Yeah, so it's, and it's worth looking back at a lot of the past episodes. And, you know, you mentioned, when you talk, you say, well, because the pharaoh's and this in the Bible, you, the difference is you're not just going, you know, all this stuff is stupid. You know this stuff really well. I mean, I think there's been several episodes of your show where you're like, well, actually, it's, I think it's this, this and this verse, I know nothing about this.

And you'll be like, and I think it goes something like, da-da-da-da-da. And the guy's reading it, he's like, yeah, that's pretty much it. And it's like, that's really, you know the Bible much better than, or as well as any of these fundamentalists Christians do. And that's really, there's a common concept on the show that I say, in order to be worthy of having a strong opinion, you have to know the argument or the counter argument as well as the person making it. And you actually are one of the few people that do that. I appreciate that. I pride myself in that. There's a thing called Rappapaport's Rules.

and Dan Dennett wrote about this in one of his 7,000 books that I think he's published. And basically, Rapid Port's Rules, there's a few of them. The only one that really matters to me is you're not ready to form an argument against someone until you can reword their argument back to them in a way that they would go, I wish I would have thought of it that. Yes, I agree. Like it has to be so well thought out that they go, yes, exactly, I wish I could have said it that way. Then you're ready to tell them why they're wrong.

that rarely happens in today's society. You say something, I straw man your position, vomitate it back to you in the way that you go. That's gross, and we're just vomiting back at each other. Nothing makes sense. I don't represent my side well. I don't represent your side well, and we just end up fighting, and that's ridiculous.

So I make it a point to learn and to read the Bible, to do Bible study, to sit with people who know the Bible. I've read the Bible twice, by the way. I made a ton of notes. I published a book on it in 2010, and I just, I agree. agree with you. That's why I listen all a conservative radio and a lot of the Christian, anytime I'm driving through town or I'm on some sort of comedy tour and I'm just doing nothing or driving,

I just hit that seek button until I hear the preacher, the local preacher at the church, talking about something. I'm fascinated by this stuff. It's funny. You're fascinated by it. For me, it also, I don't know what it is. Some of it freaks me out a little to hear it because I go, who's listening to this and it's like, oh yeah, that's great. Well, a lot of people. A lot of people. Which is why I feel the need to, like, be on the front lines doing this. Because as much as I love my comedy career, I'm like, this is something that I feel like still needs to happen. Because there are a lot of people that do that. And then they go, I wonder what the atheists are saying. And then they tune into my show. So I take those clips. I play the clip on the show and then go,

that's a complete misrepresentation of what this is. You met KT earlier, my co-host. KT. Tatara is a wonderful stand-up comedian. He was in studio with me last week. And he heard me say something at the end of the show. And he died laughing. And all it was was the, my guest said, I think, he's like most of the stuff that you've quoted David is out of context people need to read their Bibles and then KT kind of went he kind of looked at me and I said I agree read it everybody should read it the more I read it the less I believed it and as soon as I said it that way KT literally fell over laughing oh my man he was trying not to be rude and laugh at the guess and he wasn't he was like he told me after the show he goes he goes dude you were just so confident with that it was so

nonchunt like yeah absolutely everybody should read it he's like you just turned it around and I go it wasn't a ploy I wasn't being a jerk about it? I'm dead serious. Reading the Bible makes atheists. People think, and here's the thing, Jordan. I definitely want to say this on your show, man, because you probably have a lot of religious people listening or watching. I think so. Yeah, and that's fine. And I probably should have put this at the top of the show. I'm not against all the things you love about your religion. I'm against the stuff you don't know is in there. Because people normally associate their religion with loving your neighbor, being kind to each other,

helping the less fortunate, and living a prosperous life onto another life for eternal happiness and loving your, seeing your dead loved ones again. And they think that when I say atheists that I'm trying to rip all of that out of your life, I want you to keep every bit of that. My only argument is I think you can have that

without the divisive stuff that comes with fundamentalist religious belief. And I have an analogy for that. Yeah, let's hear that. Because I love, you talk about, is it called secular humanism? Yeah, exactly what it is. So secular humanism is this idea that there is something greater than you. Do you believe in anything?

Yeah, I believe there's something bigger than me. I do. But I believe that that thing is you and your wife and everybody listening. Humanity as a whole, the collective human species. So it's not like a metaphysical thing? No. There's a bigger machine at work. And I have to understand my place in it, but also understand that I have the ability to change my place in it if I choose, right?

I can do comedy. I can do acting. I can do a podcast. I can quit all of this and go work in a machine shop and have no public voice. If I get tired of the public lifestyle, I can go be private, do whatever I want. I can't change my lane. But I can't pretend that I am the reason I'm here and that everybody, you know what I'm saying? I can't believe, like that's a Hitler type thing where I'm going to fix it all.

Calm down, Cowboy, right? That's not okay. So here's the analogy I like to pour out. For all the religious people, I really want them to imagine something with me for a second. Imagine that on this table here, I have a glass, an empty glass. You can see right through it. And I grab a dark cola. I'll let you name the brand if you want.

You pour a dark cola in there. Are you afraid to just say like Coca-Cola? Yeah, I would never say that because I was writing it in my book, and my literary agent was like, you're going to get sued. you can't say any brand name. You have to just say cola. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because of how the analogy goes. Okay. You'll see. Okay. You'll see. And if you need to edit that out, it's up to you. No, that's okay. So I pour the cola in the glass.

And so you have this glass of dark cola in front of you. I go, well, this is, this is, if you're dying of dehydration, this can save your life. That's true. It can. If you're really hungry, it can make you feel full. It can. if you need to pass gas and you're unable to medically. This will help you pass gas.

It will give you gas. It'll make you burp. Whatever. There are some benefits to this. It's not all bad, right? But it also comes with a lot of sugar that's going to make you gain weight. A lot of syrup that's bad for you. It comes with a lot of other chemicals that are bad for your teeth, right?

It's got dye in it. Because most colors are clear. If you know that, I used to work for one of the, major manufacturers. Crystal Pepsi back in the day? Yeah, well, they all look like Crystal Pepsi. Right. They just make them dark because nobody buys clear sodas.

Right, caramel. Unless they specifically go for Seven Upper Sprite or Sierra Mist. Got to get them all in there. Yeah, they just won't do it. I used to work for one of them, and they used to bring by samples for us to try of new colas. Every one of them, they look like a little NyQuil, like, shot glass thing. Every one of them were clear.

They add the color right before it goes out to people because people just won't buy. Right, it sort of inflates the value. If it looks like water, it's like, I'm not going to pay two, bucks for that's a good point yeah I assume that's why which even Sprite and seven up both have gone with like a green tint to their bottles for that reason because Crystal Pepsi failed ridiculously right even though it was just basically Pepsi yeah without the coloring in it I remember an S&L skit about Crystal gravy I never saw that way dude they're just dumping like I guess well I go to my friend's dad who knows a lot of stuff just like weird factoids I go what is that and he goes it's got to be like high fructose corn syrup yeah that they're pouring in their mouth and they're like dipping chicken and it's like Crystal Gravy, and they had like the right here, right now theme song from Van Cayland playing the backer. But Crystal Pepsi failed miserably probably because it was like we didn't, the consumer expectation just didn't match.

Right. So imagine you've got this glass and it's got some life-sustaining things in it. Yes, it can save your life. It can make you feel full if you're hungry. It's got some stuff in it that's decent for you. And by the way, you do need a little sugar. So I guess on some degree, if you take a sip of that, it's got enough sugar in it, probably for a day.

And so, you know, you've got some good stuff in there. And now imagine that I could reach. with this magical syringe, and I could suck out the syrup and the sugar and the dye, and all of the crap that makes you fat and rot your teeth and does all the horrible things for you, all the caffeine that makes you jittery. I pull everything negative out of that. What's left in there? Sparkling water? Not even necessarily sparkling. What if I even took out the carbonation?

Sure. So you don't get gassy. And it's just pure water. That's still life-sustaining. That's all the good stuff in it. without the bad things. That, what you have left is humanism. It's the life-sustaining water without all of the crap. Like, my church is better than your church. Here's the way the animal must be facing when you slaughter it.

Here are the animals you're allowed to eat. Here's who's allowed to be in your bed. Here's who you can have sex with. Here's what you're allowed to eat on Fridays. Here's here you should kill. Here's who you shouldn't kill. Here's who can be slaves. Here's who shouldn't be slaves.

The Bible is filled with, with divisive stuff. So what I tell religious people, I never want to rip something out from one of them without a safety net. What I want to say is look into secular humanism, look at how it is the pure glass of water where you can love your neighbor,

you can bring happiness to the world, you can do charity work without all the divisiveness that comes with organized religion. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, David Smalley. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show.

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so we can get some love from the overcast audience, and it really helps build the show family. If you need a how to do that, just head over to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe and scroll to the bottom. and there's a couple images there to get you on your merry way. And now for the conclusion of our episode with David Smalley. What about somebody is a counter argument, and I'm not going to be great at this because I'm not religious,

but what about somebody goes, yeah, but look, man, I get that that's in there. I don't have slaves. I don't hate gay people. I cut out all that stuff that's negative, and I leave in the, that's basically what I'm already doing with my religion. A lot of people are thinking that right now. Sure, they are. The problem is you still worship a God, that did those things. And Malachi 3.6 says, I, the Lord, do not change. So if God at one time was okay with slavery, he's okay with it today. So you literally worship someone who authorized slavery. You literally worship someone who authorized the murdering of millions of people. I think God kills over two million people in the Bible. And I think Satan kills like 10 in the Bible.

10 people? Yeah, 10. Yeah, yeah. I think the numbers are right. People can fact check me. I'm pretty sure God kills two million. By the way, he also flooded the entire earth. He said he regrets making human beings. These aren't things that people talk about in church. The preacher isn't saying this type of stuff. So even though you've let go of some of those things, all that means is you're inconsistent with your own religious beliefs. You are rejecting parts of the Bible that you say are God's word. Is it God's word or not? And if you say, well, some of it's God's word and some of it's not. Well, then we have a whole new problem. What about the parts of Jesus coming back to life? Is that God's word? Yes, because it makes you feel good or yes, because it actually is.

How do you know that wasn't some sort of metaphor? How do you know? And if we admit then that there are human errors in the Bible, we go, how do we know which parts to take literally, which parts are poetry? Well, it's the ones that I want. The ones that you want. Right. Right.

And like I said, no one's ever said, I know God disagrees with me on this, but I'm going to stick to it anyway. No, they always think God agrees with their political view or whatever it may be. And if your God and your imagination live in the same place, maybe you've imagined your God. And you've built your God because the God of the Bible doesn't play that shit. He's not okay with you cherry picking. You break one sin, you break all sin.

You take all of this, you take none of this. Don't take not one dot, not one jot, not one tittle shall be erased from the law. Or you shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. I mean, you can't take anything away from the commandments or anything. By the way, 637 Levitical commandments. We're not just talking about the 10 that people like to put up in front of the post office. We're talking about 637 things. That's the old law, and that's what Jesus was referring to when he talked about it.

So even though you may have removed those things from your life, for one, that just makes you inconsistent with your belief. But it also means you still believe things that are lacking evidence. And that's still a problem. Because like we talked about earlier on, you could be taken advantage of, you could be tricked. It's just better to ask for evidence and to keep on moving on. So I think secular humanism, having a skeptic-based mindset, regardless of what the topic is, is a far more productive and happy lifestyle. And when you realize that you don't get a second chance in some sort of afterlife, this life, this life becomes so much more valuable. It becomes so much more precious. And you have this

desire to take good care of it and to love people and to treat them with respect. This might be our last interaction. Well, you almost died last week. Literally. After we scheduled this, I was like, how dare you? It's taking us so long to get this on the calendar and you'll go and almost get killed. I really just didn't want to do this show. So I was like, oh, there's a guardrail. Let me slam into that. Yeah, the brief context for that for the listener is you're tired stripped or something in the middle of the road at 70 miles an hour and hit a guardrail. We're lucky to be having this conference. Well, you're lucky to do anything. I literally almost died.

It's on my Instagram, David C. Smalley, if they want to check that out. Yeah, we'll link to that in the shows. All the pictures and the story is there. There's a detailed story. My publicist wrote a detailed story on my Facebook page, too. I saw the, I was just checking Instagram like before we went to bed, I don't know, like last week or whatever. And I saw this just totaled Mustang. And I went, whoa, what's this?

And I was like, oh, David Smalley got in a car accident. I told Jen, she goes, what? Is he okay? And I was like, this was a pretty gnarly potato-sized bruise he's got here, but he posted this. So I guess he's not dead. Yeah. You know, but it looked like, if someone said this was the result of a drunk driving accident and four people died, I would have been like, dang. Like, it looked that bad.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was. I got a lot of internal damage. I had a bruised left clavicle. I've got some internal stomach wall bruising, chest bruising, got some stuff. my arm and legs kept going numb. My left arm and my left leg. You had that checked out, I assume.

Yeah, I did. I went to the hospital. They haven't gone numb in probably three or four days now. So it's getting better. But yeah, I had a lot. I was banged up. I was really big up. I assume you've gotten a lot of email that's like, well, God saved you for some reason.

Or like somebody's been, had to throw that out at you. Only atheists being assholes. Oh, okay. So just me and like a handful of. Yeah. Yeah. Just joking with me. Yeah.

I think one person said something about, some atheists get kind of spiritual. And they'll say, we still need you. You have a purpose here. We need you to fight the religious monster. You know, the universe knew you were still necessary, stuff like that. A little bit. It's all come from secular people mostly.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Did you get it, I know you're a comedian primarily. Did you get into comedy because of religion somehow? I mean, is that, or is that too tenuous of a connection? That's funny that you say that. I never, I never thought that until right now. I did stand up comedy about 14, 15 years ago.

one time, didn't go very well. Okay. I mean, as your first time was probably I was supposed to crush. And then I didn't do it again for like 10 years. But for several years,

I did a lot of speaking and like in the atheist circles I'd go to conferences or 1,200 people, 400 people. I was giving talks. I always made my talks funny. I'd always write jokes. And sometimes I'd have a presentation

behind me and I would say something and then I would click the mouse and something would happen behind me that I pretended not to know about. I put on a show for people. I made sure they had a good time. It's a good idea. I always wrote jokes.

into stuff and made it fun. But I tended to make my focus of basically kind of what you were talking about on my show. Like, here are ways to talk to people without being a jerk. Here are ways to diffuse situations. Don't make people's walls go up. Make them be open to your guidance. Ask it, using the So, the Socratic method, I would teach these things at atheist conventions. So seven, eight, maybe nine years of me speaking and sort of being funny on stage. And then I was asked to emce the comedy show at the Reason Rally in 2016. And I went, yeah, I'll do that. And I'll just do like five minutes of stand-up.

And I wrote religious jokes and went out and did five minutes and killed with 500 people there. It feels good, doesn't it? It felt amazing. Yeah. It set the bar pretty high because then I came to L.A. and bombed a lot and got better. But it set the bar pretty high.

Yeah. And believe it or not, I'll tell you now, now that I've been doing it for several years, and I have my own show at the comedy store and I have this recurring thing and I go on tour and stuff doing comedy. Where can we find out more just so we put that in the show? It's all at David C.Smally.com. There's a big button that says comedy. They can watch some of my clips and then see where I'm going to be.

Yeah, we'll have that. Because I listen to your show and you are really funny. I told Jen, I was like, it's like that other one we used to listen to the one that you always get compared to. And I was like, but he's funnier by a, well, he's funny. I don't think, I don't think Seth Eddv's funny. And I was like, great guy. He's just not a comedian. Right.

And I'm like, so it's kind of like if Rogan had really well reason to argue. about something that I cared about. It's like that. Wow, that means a lot to me. I appreciate it. Yeah, we were like super hooked on it. That's why I was like, because I was doing prep and I was like, oh man, what am I to my ass this guy?

And then we just binge listen to like 12 hours of, uh, of dogma debate. And I was like, how is it's not more popular? Yeah, that's cool. I appreciate it. I mean, it is popular. No, there should be more popular. It should be more popular. And hearing you say that means a lot to me.

I know the success you've had on your show. So I do appreciate that. So yeah, your listener should go subscribe. Yeah, definitely. Willing to it in the notes. And I know I just cut you off, but I wanted to get the comedy thing in there. What was I saying? You were saying you killed it at the reason rally.

You came to L.A., you bombed a little bit. And then I started to notice something. I started bombing because I quit doing my religious material. Oh, okay. I was like, people are going to get mad about that. I'm not going to do that stuff. And so I stopped doing it. And then one day I was like, screw it.

I'm going to do my material. I'm going to see what happens. And I decided to do this when I was on the road with a comedian. I was on the road with Ian Harris. He took me as his feature. He was headlining. And we're in Cottonwood, Arizona. Oh, man.

This is already, I already see this is going. Cottonwood, Arizona, and I'm going, I don't usually get nervous before a show, but I was pretty terrified. Because I'm like, we're in the middle of nowhere. It's a one-night-only show. This place is packed. It's a small town, so they have what they call a community center.

That's where the dances are. That's where the elderly couples go. That's where the 19-year-olds go. They let 16-year-olds in, but they sell alcohol, so kids have like exes on their hands. Little kids, older people, it's the only thing to do in this town. And I'm like, here we are in a very conservative state in a small town.

Everybody from the community is in here. And I'm the first comedian. Oh, man. There's not even an MC or an introd, normally there's a couple of openers, and I'm the feature, and then we have a big headliner. Yeah. Just me. Oh, man. And so Ian grabs a mic backstage, and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Smalley.

It's Ian. The headliner is backstage with a wireless mic. I walk out on stage, and I'm like, as I'm walking. and I hate doing this. I always at least want to know my first line. Sure. I didn't know what I was going to say. Oh, that's so terrible.

I was like, am I going to do my religious joke or am I going to warm them up a little and then throw it out? And as I was standing there, I set my beer down on a bar stool and I had a hoodie on it. I put my hands in my pockets and I just stared at them. And they all thought it was part of the act. I was literally trying to decide what I'm going to do. And I'm looking around at them and I just thought in my head, I went, fuck it. I'm just going to do it. Yeah.

And I said, hey, do you think when Christians get braces for their kids, they're finally admitting that God fucked up? They died laughing. It killed. Massive exhale. Yes. And I grabbed the beer and I was like, good. My people showed up.

And they started clapping. A applause break on the first joke. Ridiculous. And I literally, I relaxed. I took a drink of the beer. And I thought, because Ian is also an atheist, I was like, it must be like a bunch of of atheists here. After the show, we hung out and started talking about everybody was religious. I'm sure. I started asking me. And they were like, oh, I love your stuff. And then I was like,

I wonder if that's a thing. I wonder if because they're in the religion, they find it funny to make fun of. So when I came back to L.A., I started doing my religious jokes, and it was killing. So I don't solely focus on that. I have a lot of those, but I talk about, you know, the way I look, yet being liberal. I talk a lot about a lot of different stuff. I mentioned politics. I don't never talk about Trump. I think it's low-hanging fruit at this point. But whenever I do my religious material in front of religious people, it's the biggest laughs I ever get. I went to Fort Worth. I was on the road with John Reap, you know, John Reap, the, the Dodge Himmy guy. That thing got a Himmy. That dude, he was on sitcoms and stuff and he did some good luck Charlie stuff. I was his feature. Five shows in

a row of Fort Worth, Texas, near my hometown. See, anything in Texas, I'd be like, I don't know, everybody's armed. I did it. I did it. And they loved it. That's great. I did jokes about about, I did that joke a little bit differently. I did jokes about talking to racist people about the whole spill I went on about all the fun got sucked out of your DNA. That's a bit that I do. And I did that. They were dying.

All white crowds, redneck conservative. They loved it. I go, that says something about our society that you can walk into their turf and talk to them about how ridiculous their views are and they laugh about it because they understand it's a comedy show. In a weird way, yeah. Religion is kind of why I'm a comedian.

But I didn't mean for it to happen like that. Okay, I was wondering if, like, maybe there was some thing in your child where you're like, oh, I dealt with that because, you're through comedy or something. You know, you knew that story. It's always been a nut. I've always been outgoing and a nut. And I do improv and I do acting and I do stand-up comedy. It must be nice to be able to do that.

Because comedy is kind of a license to pretty much, as long as it's at least got an element of humor, you can kind of do almost anything. Yeah. It's when stuff's not funny and only offensive that people are like, eye roll, and then it just gets to be annoying. Well, every comedy show, somebody does get offended. Fine. They do. That's fine.

You just never know. And that's... They came there looking for that. That's kind of our job. It's kind of our job. If it weren't for comedians pushing the envelope, where would the line be? Well, it's funny because that's exactly my point on this is I went to North Korea on a trip. And I've been there four times.

On purpose. Yeah. It was a thing I used to do was going tours there. And I remember asking about comedy. And they said, yeah, we have comedy shows. And I was like, what do y'all joke about? Because usually we joke about politics, politicians especially. You, like, did people tell jokes about, like, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un?

And they were like, whoa, no, not at all. And I thought, huh, because here, that's a whole thing. Like, you make fun of the authority figures. You make fun of the government. You make fun of the inefficiency of this. And they're like, nope, that is completely off limits. Like, they can't joke about that at all. And that goes to your point where you're pushing the envelope.

They're like, nope, that envelope stops right where we want it to. You can make all the jokes you want as long as they're not about these actual sacred things. But I guarantee you when those comedians aren't on stage and they're in the green room or they're at home with another comedian friend, I bet you they do. And I bet you that's the hardest that they ever laugh. And somebody's going, one day, I'm just going to say it, man. One day I'm just going to say it. You better not, you're going to die. Yeah, but one day I'm going to say it.

Yeah. As soon as the whole thing collapses, we're going to have a wicked comedy stuff from, like, the top North Korean comedians. Sure. It's all about, here's all the stuff we couldn't say for the last, like, 70 years. Yeah. You made an interesting point on one of your shows, actually, that people in Hollywood are a little bit more like, I use the term woo-woo, but like what I really mean by that is willing to believe stuff that is just not founded in reality. and I wanted to know why you think that is because I used to think it was just California

and then I moved to NorCal and I was like oh it's a California thing but man is Hollywood just loaded with this crap it really is and I understand it and I don't want to say I give him a pass but I totally understand it I don't know if you've ever done any acting have you ever done any acting any theater or anything?

Not really no I mean like video game voiceover it's not the same thing okay yeah it's not the same I do voice stuff too every now and then but for me I was religious for a long time in my early years. Talked to God, thought I had answers from God. Never felt. I felt something sometimes, but never felt like I did when I was acting.

Becoming another character, and if you take it seriously, I'm not saying a commercial where you're just like, tied, the best product ever. Like, not that stuff. I'm talking about embodying a dramatic character that is a serial killer or that is a wife-beating maniac or an alcoholic or someone who's severely addicted to drugs, when you have to embody someone else, especially if you apply like a method-acting sort of thing.

Yeah, where you basically live the role. Yeah, but not always. Like, you don't have to live the role that way. You can method-act and leave it on the stage. It's so hard to put into words. And this is why I think they get really spiritual. There are skeptics out there listening going, bullshit, there's no way. Because they don't understand it. And one of my quotes that gets passed

around that I'm quite proud of is that skepticism isn't just refraining from automatic acceptance. It's refraining from automatic rejection as well. So you just go, nope, bullshit, you're, within reason, right? You're being hyper-sceptic about it. You're refusing to even look at evidence that might prove you wrong, which then puts you in a confirmation bias, and now you're flowing back into religious mindsets again, right? So I want people to remain open to this, the skeptic or secular listeners. When you have to embody another person, there's a certain feeling that I can't really describe. I'm convinced it's all happening in my brain. I'm not saying I'm having a spiritual experience, but I will tell you, it is the closest thing to a spiritual experience that I've ever

had and that I hear people talk about being embodied with the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost or whatever. I've had to, and usually because of the way I look, I tend to get cast in roles that are alcoholics, angry, the angry customer, the guy who beats his wife or whatever. And so all these characters that I listed off, the guys with mental illness or the psychopaths or the murderers, I've had to play all of those parts. And I remember playing a part of a guy named Mark. It's from Emily Mann wrote a play called Still Life. And it's a part where Mark, he's talking to the audience. He just stops and looks at the audience and has a whole monologue.

But it's not, he breaks the fourth wall. He's like, I want you guys to know something about what's going on. It's almost like you're walking with your friend and he's going through life and he turns to you and goes, it wasn't always like this. I thought of killing people when I got back. And if you want to look at the monologue, it's called, I think it's called I Thought of Killing People. still life Emily Mann with two ends. You'll find the exact script I had to follow. And it's just,

he's basically talking about almost killing someone with a Coke bottle at a party when he got back from war. So he's this damaged veteran who's trying to get better, goes to alcohol, tries LSD, gets super messed up,

and it goes to a party and tries to kill somebody out of anger. And as he's talking about it, as we all do, if I'm telling you about something my sister said that really pissed me off, and then she had the nerve, And then I start to get more animated because I'm angry about it.

If someone's struggling with mental illness and also drunk or high and they're recalling something that sent them into a sort of a meltdown, they start to break down again. So I start to, in this monologue, break down in the middle of the thing because I'm imagining killing someone, almost killing someone. I say that I killed him. And then I go, well, in my mind, I cut his throat and everything. And there's this really deep, that's not how I delivered, it's a little more passionate, but

there's this moment of me like literally envisioning being this guy so that I can play this role. And then the director goes, cut, where does David begin and Mark end? Yeah. Right? And so it takes a psychological toll on somebody and I will feel myself literally get chills. I'll feel myself be like, God, I can't, like my eyes will water up and I'm like, I need a second. And I just got to take a walk.

I just go outside. I get some water. I leave for a second and I come back. It's not that I can't go in and out, because sometimes he would have me stop, give me direction and say, do that line again. But a character that's that heavy,

by the way, the line ends with, I think my wife scared of me. He had a southern accent. He would go, I think my wife scared to me. Okay. I read the entire play, because I was just doing that one scene.

He ends up beating his wife in the next scene. So then I started saying it in a threatening way because I know it's coming. So instead of, I think my wife scared of me, it was, I think my wife scared of me. And I would just stare into somebody's eyes in the audience. It made people really uncomfortable. I did it for auditions. I signed an agent with that. I looked at them, I made them uncomfortable.

They were like, I believe you, you're making me feel weird. Let's sign a deal, right? My manager, same way, I got my manager with that same exact script. When I stopped being Mark, I don't know how to explain this to skeptics. When I stop being marked, there's something that happens in my body. I think it's in my brain, of course, but I can understand actors going, no, I became that guy. I understand actors going, there's more to life than my brain because it doesn't feel like it's happening in your brain. You feel it in your toes.

You feel it in your chest and your arms. It's an amazing experience. It's all happening in the brain as far as I know, but I understand why Hollywood people tend to believe in the metaphysical, tend to believe that rocks and crystals and the magic wands and these things can do stuff to you outside because stuff happens in your body when you're an actor that you cannot explain. And you think that opens them up to more sort of metaphysical type of beliefs, spiritual belief. Because the crystal rock experiment was the one that I think I mentioned I heard probably the first episode of the show that I heard where this gal thought she could tell the difference between crystals that she had brought

and rocks. She's like, for sure, I can do it. And I'll link to it in the show notes, and then when it goes behind the paywall, it's worth getting, because it's really, it's really, really interesting. She was just convinced. And then you can hear in real time on the show,

you're like, well, this is the rose courts or whatever, like the most powerful energy one. And she goes, oh, well, the reason I didn't get that one was because that one was like from my ex-boyfriend. And you just hear her, like, going through these gymnastics to try to be like, oh. And then eventually she's just like, okay, I can't do this.

Okay, I admit that I'm just not able to do that. Yeah. Here's a funny thing about that, a little insight that people don't know. Almost every time that I have a Christian on, I'll, inevitably, I will hear from another Christian that goes, that wasn't a real Christian. Right. That guy was an idiot. Have me on, and I'll have you bowing before Jesus by the end of the episode. And I go, awesome, what Friday can you record?

And that's how we continue the show. Yeah. So without them, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to, you know, say, don't do it. That's how we get our guests with people going, that guy was wrong. Let me show you real Christianity. Great. That's the way it works. Come on.

I had a crystal healer listen to that episode and reach out and go, that chick was fake. I'm the real deal. I'll be able to tell the difference. I can feel energy. And now she wants to come in studio and do it to prove that it is right and that that girl wasn't legit, which I can't wait. But we're adding another thing. Nobody knows this yet. This is the first time I'm saying it for bringing a Ouija board.

Oh, yeah. We're bringing a Ouija board in here. And by the time this airs, we may have already done that episode. So I encourage people to go look for it, assuming nobody cancels on me. But yeah, we're bringing a Ouija board. And I'm going to throw them a curveball. I can't wait. I mean, these tests are so great because you see in real time the process that people must be going through when they're trying to justify irrational beliefs.

And when they're really ridiculous, like the crystal healing thing, it causes you to go, what kind of weird-ass beliefs do I have where I'm like doing the same thing, but I believe it because I'm just thinking about like my finances or my business. Yeah, but what you're doing right now is really the mark of intelligence. What's that? It's really good. What you're doing is you're going, what could be wrong with me if I see other people doing it? Right. Okay. It was Aristotle who said it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it. You can entertain the idea that you have some flaws without accepting exactly what they are. That's okay. The people Pete Bekosian was talking about are the ones that go, it's impossible for me to be wrong.

God's in my head. Screw you. I like talking to those people because I ask them a series of questions, and then they have to go, I don't know why that is and I don't know why that is. And then they start to see that there's an issue. But if you come to the table thinking you have no issues, that's why I like to do things with the physical stuff, like the Ouija Board or the Crystal Healer or whatever, or the girl who spent $100 on a magic wand.

Yeah, a magic wand, by the way, which is a stick. That was blessed. But somebody blessed it, so it's worth $100. It was shiny, it was smooth. has a machine at home that he... A buffer. Yeah, some kind of... That buffs the stick.

So she's a sweetheart, by the way. She was super cool about it. She was super cool about it. And she was really open to it. And she's like, no, I'm just, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to do this anymore. Yeah. I love the fact that she did that.

Because that could have been super embarrassing for her. Instead, she was like, I'm just going to learn for this. Yeah. What sort of rhetorical devices are you using on the show to create understanding and change people's minds? I mean, we sort of touched on the Socratic method, which I think great. You're really good at asking people questions and getting them,

and I told you this on your show, getting them to kind of paint around themselves and then by the time you go, you ask the final sort of clincher question, they just kind of metaphorically look around and go, crap, I just painting myself into this corner, like, really tightly. You're really good at that, and it's cool to watch and, well, listen to

because Jen and I are like, oh, look, he's making her do this. He's making him say that. Oh, I, oh, I can't wait to see how this guy tries to wear him out of this. And then you go, So how do you reconcile those two things? And you can, it's like, it's like dead air. And I'm like, oh, did I accidentally hit the pause button?

No, the dude's just sitting there thinking and going, I am fucked right now. Sometimes I actually have to go make the silence shorter. I bet. So that people don't think the podcast shut off. Yeah. And people have accused me of inserting silence. And I go, it's the exact opposite. If they're dead silent for 11 seconds, I make it only like four and a half because I think that people are going to be like, what's wrong with my podcast app?

And they think that it just, they think that it just, you know, they think that it just, just went dead. That happens a lot. And that's the knockout question right there. How do you reconcile? And here's the thing. We talked about intelligence at the top of the show. Christians are very, very smart people, very smart. And really smart people are really good at justifying really bad ideas. And they will take a concept that sounds ridiculous. They know it sounds ridiculous, but they use enough words and talk themselves into the situation. But what they're doing is they're sliding in a bunch of non sequiters. These things aren't related, but they'll go this, and then you know some non-sequitur here, and then they go to another thing, part B, and then they go

some other non-sequitur, and then that's how I get to part C, you see? And that's enough for them to go, and that's why I believe it. And all I do is go, okay, so A, B, and C, I remove all of their non-sequiturors and go, how do you reconcile A with C? Because when it's a direct question, they're supposed to be able to just answer it, and they go, yeah, that doesn't really. Like it doesn't track. It doesn't track properly. You can. You can't jump that way. And that's why that Christian cop I told you about when he talked all about the story of Balam and the donkey. And he went through it all and it sounded magical and poetic and beautiful.

But he's a police officer. And I said to him, it bothers me that you believe a man and a donkey had a conversation and you carry a gun for a living. And then his response was, well, when you put it like that, I sound ridiculous. You put it like that. I just removed all the fluffiness that you tried to stuff between it. I just take part A and part C and put them together and go, what do you do with this? Because this doesn't make sense to me. That's all I really do.

Yeah, and it's questioning. You're like, you're not telling, I strongly encourage people, even if you don't think that you'd care about this, you're not interested in atheism, you're not interested in religion, or you're religious, you don't want to hear it. Just the argumentation structure of what you do is like, I've heard lawyers do stuff. I went to law school. It's really good. Like, you said you almost went into law. You'd have been really good at it because what you're, you're not. doing is getting people to ask questions of themselves by asking them questions. Like, you never

really tell anybody anything. They just question their own beliefs after you ask them things about what they're saying. Well, a lot of times they've never had these thoughts before. Right. They've never challenged themselves. They've never been challenged. So they've never had to think about it. And that's why I don't beat them up if they don't know the answer. I let them off the hook. Just write it down, think about it. Come back next month with an answer and we'll see where you are with it. Because they've never had to come up with these answers before. And a lot of time, I forgot who said it, but some quote was, um, how do I know what I think until I hear myself say it? It's one of those things. You have these ideas. You have these beliefs. And then until you have

to verbalize it, you're like, I want to hear myself say it out loud. Yeah. I'm not so proud of that stance anymore. Exactly. Yeah. You're really good at that. Really good at the argumentation. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to link to a bunch of these in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the show. It only took us a year and a half or whatever to make it happen. So I'm glad. Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it. I had a blast doing it. Thanks for having me on. Interesting episode. David is just such a clear thinker. I really like that about him. Even if you disagree with what he says, you've got to admit. His use of argument is very, very, very sharp. And if you listen to his show, I think you'll enjoy it, especially if you're interested in the topic of atheism or religion or anything like that. He's just such a good debater. Great big thank you to David Smalley as well. His show is called Dogma Debate. And you can find that on podcast one or anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage tons of relationships in my personal and professional life, check out six-minute networking. That's a course I made for you. It is free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course,

and don't say you'll do it later. The problem with kicking the can down the road, you can't make up for a lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. I see people not dig in the well before they get thirsty, and that is a huge problem for them later on. It is inevitable. Trust me, go find it. It's free, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from David Smalley. Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com

slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Walking the Dogma to Philippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others,

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