 Why not? Because why would you want it to be more pleasant for everybody? It's like if it's pleasant for everybody, it's pleasant for you. True. But if you're making people miserable, then would you be a little bit more... I mean, I guess some people don't care if they make other people miserable. No, I think some people get off on it all the time, too. Some people do. But very, very few, and nobody likes those people either way. Hi, my name's Ty. So what I normally do is I set up this little, like, sign and table in, like, parks or whatever. And I talk to people about whatever they want to talk about. Oftentimes, I'll have, like, a religious person come up, Christian, Hindu, whatever. And they'll try to, like, either explain their religion to me or, like, try to sell me on it. And I just ask questions to see if we can get to the foundation, like I believe. And oftentimes, when we get back up from that foundation, they're not as confident in that belief anymore. I'm an atheist, and I never really get an opportunity to talk to other atheists. So I thought, let me go to a place where a bunch of atheists would be. Are you guys atheists? Yes. You are? Carthable? With A word and everything? Oh, yeah. I've never done interviews with any atheists before. Would you mind if I asked you some questions about, like, atheism in general? How did you comment? What's your personal, like, transition into it? Well, I've never been religious. You've never been religious? What's your name, by the way? Melissa. Melissa. Nice to meet you. I'm Ty. Yeah, I...no, she's just shy. Oh, okay. No, she just doesn't talk in front of people very much. She's just horribly, hardly shy. Okay, okay. What's your name? That's CeCe. CeCe. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you. Okay. I have a little sign language. My oldest, my oldest is autistic. Yeah? And when she was little, we used to do sign language. She didn't talk to me. She was past three. Oh, okay. So I used to know baby signs. I didn't know a real sign language. My mom's deaf. I used to know more. More? Yeah. Cookies, yeah. I was like, thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Yeah. I used to know a bunch of ones like that because she didn't talk, but she learned some sign language when she was little. You took videos of the sign language babies? Like there are babies that, you could teach sign language at a very, very young age. Well, yeah, she did. When she was a baby, she learned a lot of it. For real, okay. I mean, she went to daycare too, and they taught a lot of that at daycare. That's incredible. So, Melissa. Yep. You were never religious? No, my grandparents were, they were Catholic. I grew up in Boston, which everybody's Catholic in Boston. I mean, everybody in my city was Catholic. Okay, okay. So I've pretty much been an atheist since I was little. First memory, I really realized it when I was like in sixth grade or something. And one of the teachers was asking what church it's everybody went to. Sure. Which you shouldn't be asking in school anyway, but again, everybody's Catholic. So. Everyone knows. And I was like, I don't go to church. And everybody's like, I'm like, what is that weird? What's the big deal? I don't go to church. And then occasionally, my grandmothers would talk, my parents were sending us to Sunday school. And we'd go for a few months. And then we'd all get sick of waking up on Sundays. And then we'd stop going to Sunday school. Would you say then that you never had a lot of the reasons why people are indoctrinated into religion and stay religious even when they realize that secularism kind of makes more logical sense is because they're weighted by like a guilt of fear or like sin. I think it's fair in family, just history. If you're raised in it and you're taught, if you don't do this, you're going to hell. Yeah. Well, that's going to scare a kid. I was never raised with that because my parents weren't religious. You live in the same house as my aunt and uncle. They weren't religious. My cousins weren't religious. So, you know, which is funny because my grandmother was, she went to church the day she died. She was like, you know. Do you feel like you missed out on that whole emotional or roller coaster that much? Yes, I did never deal with it. It just made sense. It just makes sense. Why would I believe in this? Nobody ever taught me to believe in it. It didn't make any sense. Okay. You want to ask these questions then? Sure. So some classic, so I think people who are like theists might be interested in realizing how someone who's never had religion in their life determined what's a good thing from a bad thing or what will happen to them after they die. You want to just go over some of the basic stuff then? I mean, it's just... What's a good action from a bad action? How do you determine that? It's the greater good. The greater good? It's not even a personal good. It's what's good for the greater society, which I think people have gotten away from. Okay. Everybody's about what I want. What's best for me? It's like, no, it's what's best for everybody. Could you give me an example? It's like... You should give me an example. Why would food be an example? I don't know. I don't know. It's like, yeah, you know, I'd like to keep more of my money, but I'd rather pay more taxes if it's going to make more people, if it's going to benefit more people as the universal health care. It's like, yes, I make more money than a lot of people. So you're saying... To take more of my money for taxes and make life better for everybody. You're saying you prefer to have more people be healthy than sick. You prefer to have more people be healthy than sick. Therefore, if I can pay a little bit of taxes to keep that... And it helps everybody. Yeah, that's better. Can I throw something out at you? And like I said, I'm an atheist too. I just like to challenge the ideas. And let me know if I'm thinking too far. But there are people right now who need a kidney. I imagine you have two kidneys right now. I signed up to be a donor. I've never been matched with anybody. But you don't need two right now. Yeah. You could give up one right now and give it to someone. That would make that a lot. I mean, that would make it a lot. Something like that comes down to... You could be personally really hurt by having that surgery. And yeah, that could help somebody else. It could save their lives. It could, but I think that's taken it too far as far as personal liberty. Okay, so there's... This is personal liberty. Like, you are a controller of your own body. Nobody can tell you what to do with your body. I like that. So you value things that are not just necessarily good for the commonwealth, but also personal things as well. Yeah. Personal property, personal liberty. That could hurt you. Sure. Yes, having less property could hurt you in a way like, oh, I have less fun. But it's like, it's not hurting you in real life. Whereas you have a kidney coming out, you could have a complication that could destroy your life. Sure. But don't I also have a right to my own body parts and what I decide to do with them? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's your body. Yeah, it's my body. It's part of your body. Yeah, you need one, but this is mine. But stop and stop. Body is body. Or like, how do I put it? My house is my house. Yes, people can live here, but this is my house. But it doesn't mean that you don't need that house. True. I mean. But it's the same. Will we say it's also valuable as a personal liberty for someone to say, this is my thing. I'm aware that you don't. I can help you financially with that as part of my income. On some level. Okay, so there's a given thing. There's a limit. Yeah, you have to find that limit of what you're comfortable with. Okay. And like, yes, your personal body, it's like pain and whatever. What if there was one big God that could just say, here's the list. This is the list of personal rights that you have on perfect deal with it. Yeah. I don't think there would be. If their God came down and said that and they actually proved his power, then I'd be like, all right, I was wrong. Are you saying you'd rather have a system where people can work out the limits amongst themselves? Yeah, I mean, which is part of democracy. It's like, you have to kind of work out the limits of what is and isn't, which is why taxes. It's like, yes, pay more taxes to a point. But at some point, you know, you have to give people incentives to earn more and do stuff. But then, at some point, like, people with a billion dollars that inherit it, like, what's their motivation to do anything? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, that's where it comes down to you have to figure out where the middle ground is. So it's important to develop a social contract with people and to top things up. Yeah, it's like, you live in a society. Yes. And the thing is, I think people don't understand is if you contribute to society and you're helping the lower, the less educated become rights, you're helping society in general. Like, people talk about crime, they don't want crime. What causes crime? People that have no hope. If you're not helping them have hope, they're going to get more crime. Okay. And it's like, do you want to live in a society that's completely segregated where you're scared to go in certain areas because of crime? What did you say, religion gets people hope? But I don't think people follow the religion the way they even say they do. Like, you know, people aren't very Christ-like, you know, you don't see all the Christians giving all their money to the poor and helping, I mean, some of them do. I mean, I know people that are and do follow that, but I know a lot of people that have a critical. And yeah, religion may give them hope, but it's like, it's like the hope you want and stuff in that Bible that you're supposed to follow, it's like, that's questionable. Why don't you have hope in other people and do stuff for other people? So you're not just saying hope generally, you're saying hope in other people. It's like, you have to work together. A book is not going to solve your problem. Community, like religion community, social aspects, that's more fundamental than just having hope. Yeah. Okay, okay. One last question? Sure. What happens to you when you die? Aren't you scared? Are you terrified? The thing is, you're just gone. What? You're just saying you live and that's it? How dare you? And know what you get? What do you care you did? You don't know anything anymore? It's like, yeah, as you're living personally, it's kind of scary. I'm not here anymore, but it's like, I wasn't here for billions of years. I won't be here for billions of years after. You know what's terrifying to me is living literally forever, never being able to die because then everything around me loses value because I know it'll always be there or have some sort of experience or stimuli there. And it'll be like, the fact that it's limited and temporary is what gives it value and that's what I find beautiful behind a short-term life. And it's not so much that I know I won't be here. I don't know what happens after I'm dead until I have better evidence for it. I just think you just don't exist anymore and you don't care because you don't exist. Yeah, at that point, who knows what happens. I think that's a better thing than worrying about going to hell anyway. It's like, well, you're just dead. It's like going to sleep. Okay. You don't know what happens when you're asleep. You just sleep and then you're gone. If your impression is you're dead once you're dead, do you think there's any sort of inherent justice in the universe? No. Does that make you not feel good about how the universe was put into place or anything like that? I think it just is what it is. It's like, you know, try and be a good person, be nice to other people, make their lives better. Okay. And, you know, live until you're dead. To what end? Why not? Because why would you want it to be more pleasant for everybody? It's like, if it's pleasant for everybody, it's pleasant for you. True. But if you're making people miserable, then would you be a little bit miserable? I mean, I guess some people don't care if they make other people miserable. No. I think some people get off on it all the time too. Some people do. But very, very few, and nobody likes those people anyway. Yeah. They are living in their own hell just being themselves. I think most people just want to make, you know. Yeah. But then people get caught up in their own happiness and ignore other people or something. That's very true. So it's always a limit. Yeah. One last question. Sure. Like, I guess, and I normally ask this question at the beginning, like, say from a scale from like zero to 100%, as far as confidence goes, how confident are you that no God exists? I would say about 99%. That's a perfect answer. I just, in only a sense of, you're not absolute. You can't be absolute on this thing. Very good. I don't know everything absolutely. Very good. I'm not that smart. Of course. Hey, that was a great chat. Cece, it was nice to meet you. Cece, look so sign language, we need to talk a little bit. Thank you so much for that chat. Thank you.