 today. I wanted to talk about an interview that I had last week. I don't know if I guys told you. I did tell you about it. I had it on video. The last video that I had, I said after our talk today we were gonna do, I was gonna go do a quasi debate with Christian. I'm not sure if he was a pastor or anything like that. I'm not here to demonize anybody. So the idea is I want to give just a quick little background story on like what the happened. So we met at Nanocon. I'm gonna share my screen. This is the person I met at Nanocon. His name was Pedro. Cool dude. He said on over Twitter, hey do you want to do an interview with me? And I was like oh yeah let's do an interview because I did an interview with him and it was fun. This is my this guy Pedro right here. And I'll show you this. Here's an email exchange that we have. This is me getting back to him after Twitter and I was like hey yo yo yo let's do the interview. He's like hey thanks for the email. Basically I want to do a conversation with you. Let's make the topic does God exist. And I was and I said you know I don't want to talk about God existing because the issue with that is it gives the implication if you're talking with a Christian that there's only two sides of an argument. Whether or not a Christian God exists or if atheism is right. Which I feel like biases the conversation because there's so many different genres of Christianity and atheism is not even an answer to the question of whether or not it exists. It's just a question of do you believe in this God or not. And so I said hey if you are an atheist it might be cool to have just an atheist versus atheist debate on this topic because that'd be kind of cool. And if any of you guys want to talk about like does a God exist as an atheist. We might we might agree on the idea that we don't believe in the God. But we might have some really cool interesting nuance you know things points of view that we want to throw out. And I don't think that's shared enough on the end. Whereas I would love to see a Christian debate another Christian on whether or not a God exists because that will actually show that a lot of things Christians as a as a group believe they agree on unanimously aren't the fact. And so I was like hey Christian Christian or an atheist on atheists but I'm not really interested in this. I don't think atheism answers whether or not a God exists in the first place. It'd be nice to really dive deep in this topic. If you're an atheist yourself then we can have atheists versus atheists doesn't God exist. He says no I'm actually a follower Christ. I was like oh we're talking about that last show. It's like spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like what does follower Christ mean that is like the most. Oh I didn't want to say that in my head that like in my head that's the most generic form of Christian that I can think of at this point but still still still still I mean like that is what the textbook definition of general Christian. So he really didn't want to talk about whether or not a God exists. So I said hey listen if you make the talk strictly about atheism especially as a former atheist because he did qualify himself as a former atheist I think it would be really interesting to have the conversation former and current atheists talk about atheism because I don't want to spend time and I say this in the email. I don't want to spend time talking about the capital G God that you really really are a big fan of. I think you know like I think I say here I feel like otherwise to start an honest discussion on whether or not a God exists and then focusing the talk on any specific God claim stacks the deck too much in favor of that particular God claim. And I made the example it's like it's sort of like being invited to talk about your favorite sports team so long as it's the 1998 Oakland Raiders right. I was like my issue isn't even with the roster I just want to do that worships Desmond Howard. So I'm being cheeky here and he's like no no no that's great we can do former and current atheists talk about atheism. I love it PS I don't love it. But I was like okay great. So we are agreeing that as a former atheist and me as a current atheism we're going to be talking strictly about atheism. Please don't preach at me basically and here's like more of my explanation about like listen I just don't I'm not interested. I'm happy to talk about God's in the future but I don't want to have an in-depth conversation about anyone's capital G God given that each person necessarily is pointing at a different personalized capital G God that they necessarily have a personalized relationship with like if you have a personal relationship with a God your personal G God might be different from someone else's and I'm not here to talk about the God claim conclusion I want to know about how you arrived at the conclusion like that's my whole thing like what's the reasoning that used to reach that conclusion if the reasoning is good I'll believe whatever the conclusion is but I'm not here to talk about the God and the chapters and all that stuff and he's like okay we're all good to go I'm like sounds like a plan and I can tell you this was a fun this was a fun conversation because Larry even warned me and I was like yeah yeah I know what's going to happen too I'll break the talk into three parts uh I'm we're only going to go to the most interesting one which is at the very end so talk part one it was like a lot of flattery it was really nice it's like hey man you're really amazing you really are amazing I love your channel it's so good for I was like great part two what's atheism right and the second part was or third part was thank you for telling me about atheism yay then at the very very last five minutes there's a surprise over time where it's like let me tell you about God tell you yeah let me tell you about God my capital G God yeah like you wouldn't know man being a former Christian right right oh man that would have been a big deal but um basically it's like the conversation immediately transfers into let me tell you about my worldview this is about my God and I'm not preaching at you but let's start with the book joe and then we'll go into the book of Clasias and I'll go over some of my favorite quotes it's very interesting I'd love to share this conversation with you and here's the premise that I want to make my whole philosophy especially with my street epistemology background and all that stuff is I believe I can talk to anyone about anything there's a manner of how you have those kinds of conversations and one of the biggest things about having those conversations is consent and you'll see a lot of times when Gary does this when I do this when Larry does this is that when we have a conversation with someone we we settle on a topic and then we ask is it cool if we talk about this for you know five minutes ten minutes whatever or like can we talk about this can I record this conversation would you mind if I post it there's always a a back and forth exchange and it's never formatted in the sense of and now I would like to talk about my worldview blah blah blah blah blah now we're going to talk about Ecclesiastes blah blah blah it's like hold up I'm there's two people in this conversation and we both need to be on the same page or at least consenting to have the conversation that's being thrown out otherwise if he's going to pass the plate that's a surprise surprise over time yeah yeah so anyway uh can you guys see my screen is there anything blocking the way is there anything blocking the view good all right so I think this is part where he he does mention that we are going to be talking about atheism so before we go to the topic today which is format and current atheist talk about atheism yeah I just would like to say right right we're going to be talking about atheism I'm skipping all the way the first you know the first three thirds of this are actually really good and I'm going to be posting that on my channel as well as my Patreon so you're free to check that out but what I want to get to is the interesting part where I start dying on the inside so we can all die on the inside I speak up for myself and this is the part this is why I want to share it with you because there's a lot of times where I'm like no you agree to talk about this we're talking about this and I want to know feedback from you guys my being too harsh is this fair stuff like that and I'll and I'm and feel free to say pause anytime I'm looking for the part where the conversation transitions and I'm looking for when he starts going from smile select so I'm just it just puzzles me a little bit look at the facts that some people might think that just not knowing it could be you know about things in facts and now Ty I actually want to talk a little bit about God if you don't mind remember we're talking about atheism and this is like the literally opposite of the thing that we agree to talk on so like it was like atheism atheism atheism let's talk about God to save you man he can't get messed up on an opportunity to save your soul that would be I know I know I know he I'm not and that's the thing it's like I know he's coming from like a good place but it's also a cheater it's a cheating perspective taking advantage of your good will yeah and I also feel like it implies we get to the part where we soon get to the part where it's like I want to tell you these bible verses like I don't want to hear these bible verses like well we just had a conversation about atheism you should now listen to my bible verses like no you agreed to have a conversation about atheism now you're exhibiting like the privilege of you know like this christian idea that now that you say something christian related I have to listen to it and that's not what I'm about you're literally talking to the one person or maybe the one small group of people that don't want to hear that stuff that you want to say so I know I believe it or not I know what the bible has in it all right and just don't preach at me yes I'm not going to not at all all right I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about my the my worldview okay I'm just gonna talk about this just a little bit okay so four and I think from here it would have been a lot better if the question was formatted would you mind if I talk about my worldview rather than I'm gonna talk about my worldview that's that's the biggest distinction and that takes you towards more s c versus just let me preach at you or just let me say things that you and deal with it you know yeah don't like it too bad you're going to help right what can I say it's very unprofessional for for a christian and I know and I'm I'm I'm very open to hear all that yes just one thing if you were a hindu if you were a jovo witness if you believed in Thor I wouldn't care about the god that you believe in I'm only interested truly about the manner of how you are able to substantiate the claim yeah through through whatever reasoning process you used like I just want to know the reasoning process because if it's a reasonable reasoning process I'll believe in whatever god is at the end of that tunnel too but if you tell me if for example you spend the next 20 minutes telling me about like I was raised here this terrible thing happened to me and then I had an awakening and this god that just really shumbled like that's great what's the what is the reasoning that you used to get to that god claim because stories from tradition don't really move me I have documented channels of me having these kinds of conversation do you have a do you have it sounds like I'm not convinced and you are convinced I understand what you're convinced in how did you become convinced okay so um first of all first of all I can see how you have had many conversations about this and you're just kind of structuring the conversation before it happens because you have had it many times I've had it many times and we only have like five minutes left oh I understand well just so let me just tell you about my god belief while we got from it's like oh my no actually Ty and let's let's do something let's do something because I think that was and I'm trying to play it light and nicely done I'm trying to hint like hey this isn't cool do this at this last stage and I'm also just trying to say like hey if you want to format the conversation where you can talk about god belief at least just tell me what convinced you first and maybe down the road we can get to that but we have five minutes if you want to do like a quick little chat sc style or at least figure out what your epistemology is just tell me what convinced you about the god belief and that starts I feel like the the escalation of well you're not letting me talk it's about what the thing I want it's like you don't have my consent to talk about the thing you want you invited me to talk about this thing that we both wanted we're on a show together salesman has to control the conversation that's one of the things when I was in sales like oh really really pitching it you know you have to control the conversation you have to control the conversation in order to persuade the person in order to believe that they need to buy what that what um they are selling you so I began to wreck once I what became not religious anymore I began to recognize these same tactics and um apologist and evangelicals and pastors and just common religious people mmm Larry I want to shake up the format real quick before we get into the more heated parts of this talk would you mind if we did the the the break and then the news after this video explanation no that's fine cool so why don't you take us out real quick and we will be literally right here okay this is a WZO radio 103.9 LP FM live right here in Knoxville Tennessee this Sunday morning um June 7th it's about 11 30 a.m nice uh and uh we'll be back in just a minute you digital free thought radio hour 103.9 FM simply with that okay cool let's get back to this video we're about to wrap up so we're getting the part where uh this is a interview that I had with uh uh Christian am I gonna you're gonna finish the video and then I'm gonna give the exactly yeah and I think I'll be done maybe about five minutes yeah that's fine yeah that is a beautiful question what I was trying to do before uh before answering your question sure perhaps we can do this out of the time sure what I wanted to do is not convince you that god exists I just want you to tell me what convinced you and I'll leave it whether or not it convinces me on as a my follow-up question okay you can concisely tell me what convinced you in a god like I said I had these conversations five minutes anyway okay what convinced you that a god was real what convinced you that a god is real let's get straight to the point okay well before going there I want to actually make just say the point about not knowing how important that is for me as a follower of christ too and I know that as soon as as I say before we go to the place I really don't want to go by the way yeah oh you'll also hear a lot of times I'm not preaching at you but god would love to have a relationship follower of christ there's a whole myriad of questions that come that come yeah I was wondering you're sitting down you haven't moved anywhere is is christ not moving either like who are you really following really there you go that is that is an analytic perspective about the same issues and linguistics but let's let me tell you about why uh oh I'm not preaching I'm just talking about my worldview because you were talking about the not knowing yeah and uh you want to know the reasoning actually I didn't pursue that I wanted to know also the reason why you actually describe best models in order to describe reality and when it comes to reality you don't think that reality might be I don't I don't know if it's fair to say importance I don't know if you would say that way but it might be overrated might be maybe what I'm saying okay so over raises so yeah that is kind of a reasoning that would so uh he got caught up on the idea that I said like reality might be overrated not saying that it's useless it's that science is not about giving you reality it's about coming up with a model to explain how reality works and that and that pursuit is really useful because it allows us to apply it to things that might be objectively true or things that may not be like you know video games or google maps which uses a flat earth model it's just a flat 2d map it doesn't predict the curvature of the earth when you go from here to mcdonald's because it's more useful to just say point a point b it's going to be about seven miles right and like as long as it's a useful model we can we can get some really useful data out of it and the difference between the usefulness and the and the objective truth of it could be nominal so to that point the objective reality could be slightly overrated but we at least have this really useful way to like do stuff and then like interact with people and come up with models of reality he hooked on that and he was like okay so if you don't know if you think reality is overrated let me tell you what isn't overrated god and if you don't know and i know that i don't have thought process of atheist doesn't know what objective reality is therefore uh christians do because we have the one true compass which is god let me tell you about this other model that you could use and follow and we got caught up on that a little bit i'll get to the point where he introduces the book of job and and then skip past that because i'm just politely waiting through him to be done and then when he's done with the book of job he goes into ecclesiasties i'm like we got to stop okay so i would like to know that as well because ignore if i if i would stay with the definition of your definition of science and how it kind of it kind of leads to thinking that uh realities over races i wouldn't believe either the way you talk about science yeah and i mean that in a cheeky way sort of like the pursuit of trying to figure out what your first kiss felt like it's just like yes but if you build a machine like a time machine to figure out what your first kiss is like i'm like way more interested in the time machine than that stupid moment in high school yeah where you kiss michelle andrews who had like braces and you crack teeth because you you forgot about that because of nostalgia but you build a time machine that's way more interesting so yeah you learn your first kiss but like this is overrated compared to the time machine like the pursuit of science is always going to be something more interested than these facile moments and that we're stringing together and calling so what i wanted to say is that in my worldview when it comes to not knowing that is actually something that you know what our state of being as it addresses describes biblically and i know that i'm saying many things that would call would just bring forth many questions but just hear me what i want to say about the the facts that i think that not knowing is actually our nature is there two moments i'm not preaching i'm just talking about my worldview here um there are two moments in the bible that are beautiful for me and for many people which is first of all we have the book of joe uh allegedly the the oldest book in the bible where joe is asking for 37 chapters the reasoning why something so evil has happened to him he's not up to 38 and when it comes to god as answering this question god actually doesn't answer the what god does is to to widen to widen the perspective of joe of joe right he says you're thinking about this but what about this that you know you need this you know that for that to happen you need this and so i'm skipping past this it's pretty long and i'm being polite listening through it but his idea is that the book of joe is like an example of a guy who doesn't know but the real answer is because god does exist and he's just testing which in my opinion is like one of the grossest examples of like the behavior of a deity that's supposed to be benevolent right right pick on his own followers nary you want to follow up on that because i know you got some beef on this and then mock them for questioning like you if you like how dare you even ask the question that's kind of how he treated joe yeah like who the and literally hang out with the devil yeah i think that god killed his family and his children and all that stuff and then gave them back to him no not the same one just more women that's my point they gave him a new wife a new family etc etc he still lost his original wife and family and property and all that good stuff and it was all due to a bet with satan so exactly we're just playing with the lives of his followers especially his true believers it's a terrible story it's a really really rough story to pull anything beautiful from and it speaks to how into the glee we're already in indeed right hey budger welcome it's good to see you and you're muted hey guys hey budger welcome just i was i'll go for it go for it yeah you guys threw me off when i joined it i saw two ties and i was like the cloning worked finally finally there's double me uh so this is the debate that i had last week with christian uh i didn't want to have a conversation about christianity he said he was a former atheist so i was like hey current atheist former atheist let's talk about atheism and we did for like 55 minutes and then at the last five minutes he's like let me tell you about god and i was like did you ask me if i want to talk about that because i've made it explicitly clear in emails and twitter i don't want to have a conversation about God i don't want to have a conversation about atheism he's like well you talked about atheism for 55 minutes let's talk about God and i was like no you invited me to a conversation about atheism mm you don't have my consent to talk about god if you want to have that conversation at least tell me what convinced you but don't just start preaching at me he's like okay fine I won't preach at you but the beautiful book of Job is where I'd like to begin and then and you can see my face right now it's like and he's already lost he's already lost in it so let me um skip a wee bit forward I think there's a point where it's like this is a lot longer than I expected sorry about this Larry let's say I'm aware of the story what does it mean to you okay so this is one point and I'll finish the other one and then there's a beautiful verse in it Gary you might like that as an approach um I would say it a little more politely because I'm a bit you know drawn out but like when someone starts to say like I have this 14 long chapter recital that I want to give you it's like okay I understand but what does that mean to you what does it speak to your heart depending on what you're talking to it's a good way to get past memorization regression especially and I think you're referring to the chat I had with the two elders where the story what does it mean to you okay so this is one point and I'll finish the other one and then there's a beautiful verse in the Ecclesiastes that goes I believe you but what do you mean to you so let me let me let me say what the word goes do you realize it's not like you're talking to a person who hasn't read the bible it's that I just don't want to sit and and go over bible verses why don't you just tell me what it means to you because that's the interesting part of the conversation for two people who are talking to each other does that make sense it doesn't why why does it doesn't like why doesn't that make sense why can't I just tell you bible verses right now like aren't you a person that loves bible verses like no like I'm literally not that person and you invited me to have a conversation about not that how does it not make sense to you anyway why why would that make sense for me there is a multitude of people on the world billions of people who would love to talk with the bible about you and you have direct access in your mind yeah when all powerful being that you believe in who would love to talk to you as much as you want but unlike those conversations I'm not asking you for 10 percent of your paycheck and I'm actually listening to you so you're talking to a human being that has a a moral short period of time and you know my time is valuable and I'm and I think I've made it clearly ahead of time that I don't want to talk about I want to know what they mean to you if you can't get there maybe we can set this up as a different time but this isn't the conversation I signed up for so again I'm opening up the window and I'm still sticking my ground because there is that the idea of the show is like Christian privilege like I'm not just going to sit here and and have you recite bible verses at me or preach at me and at the end of his like Job talk he was like and let me tell you how beautiful God is listen it was just the idea that you know Job didn't understand it's like that's a terrible story I'm not going to say anything now when he moves into Ecclesiastus like I can't take this anymore like I have to speak up and so I think it's worthwhile that if you are an atheist don't don't be passive when you know Christian privilege is being pushed on you it's okay to speak up and express yourself like hey I don't have the you don't have consent to push me through this right now but I think that ends this we can talk about this later on Pujo what do you think so just is anybody else distracted by the need to play the game of find the different things in the two pictures tie has a red shirt on that one and a blue shirt on that one the guitar the guitar's still there isn't that what you think oh there's a guitar in the background where where oh no lately right by your door oh between you and this version I thought you meant between like this guy and this guy I was like it's easy because everything's different oh that's easy though that was that was that's this is that's really interesting this conversation with this guy any part yeah let's wrap up let's wrap up and then we can get into news oh I see what you're saying so so you just don't want to talk about we have talks about a little bit about the worldview of atheism yeah when it comes to talking about when my my worldview finds a foundation you don't want to talk about these no because you invited me to a talk about atheism for 55 minutes for an hour really I was not invited to a talk about your worldview and for you to switch it around in the last step and be like oh well you want to just like if I go out with someone to Taco Bell right and and then was like hey you want to go to talk was like sure I go to Taco Bell but I got to go to work tomorrow it's like okay that's cool we go to Taco Bell we come back and it's like when I'm ready to go to work tomorrow he's in my car he's like let's go to work it's like you don't work where I work what are you doing it's like oh I get to work I get half your paycheck now it's like no no no we're married I'm gonna sleep in your bed it's like no we agreed to Taco Bell and that was it you don't have my consent for any of this we didn't agree on any of that like what part of that more over he wants you to go to his work oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well you know it's it's like the the first the whole conversation about the atheism thing is really just his extended segue into his his proselytizing right right right and I'm not standing up for it also it's like if you know when people leave the religion it's a very traumatic experience a lot of times right so like if I was a soldier with PTSD right and I'm on a conversation with someone who was like a former soldier or whatever and he's like hey let me tell you about my loudest grenade sound effect noises that I love to make with my mouth and I'm like please don't please don't do that because that's really gonna stress me out it was like well I heard you talk about your your stuff all the while now I want to talk about myself like no dude that's not cool like you don't understand the the the idea of one being a good host to consent and three the trauma that like people who actually leave Christianity or religion and and end up without faith might still be dealing with and that's like a really sensitive topic so for you to say like hey I'll agree to talk to you about atheism in 55 minutes but when I preach at you at the end and you don't want to hear it that's your that's your more Christian privilege right there that's more Christian privilege right there anyway uh let's see I think that I would I would happily talk about what convinced you that a god was real but if it wasn't that bible verse then I don't care about it because that's not what obviously got you to your god belief yeah but we were not we were not talking about that time we I was I just wanted to make a point how Christians are in a state of being where actually we actually don't know and not knowing it's a beautiful thing but you seem not to let me finish what I'm trying to say so perhaps perhaps we can talk about that maybe another time because we are I'll be honest with you makes me a little bit sad that's uh make him sad ty yeah I I think his idea is like hey you're a guy that talks to anyone about anything yet you won't let me talk about religion I'm like there's a method to the madness of listening to anyone talk about anything and it's not you be quiet and let the other person vent at you it's called street epistemology and the very very first rule in my book of how to do se is keep it positive you know one keep it positive to make it a conversation and then three make let the other person try to let the other person think for themselves right and yeah when if you're not keeping it positive because the other person is getting uncomfortable you're failing at any attempt to make an actual connection with another human being second if you're not making a conversation conversations go both ways necessarily it's not just me telling you things like here's my worldview I'm not preaching but I'm just going to tell you what my worldview is I'm not trying to convince you just listen to me like that's not a conversation and then three you're not letting me think you're just letting me listen to you and that's not cool so like in all three pillars of how to do se this is failing and I'm politely telling him on multiple occasions please don't preach at me too let's talk about this later very this is what we agreed on please stop and no I won't let you finish so deal with that like but and you want to keep this up for five minutes fine but at this certain point our time's going to be up that's you don't you just don't want to hear about something because if we if we all approach conversations this way then we actually we couldn't talk about I certainly wouldn't want to clear the whole conversation but we did agree in text that this would be a conversation between a foreman atheist and an atheist about atheism yeah and you did say at the last minute that you want to talk about God I'm totally fine with that but my interest in God conversations isn't the holy book the verses that you like because if I I really care about what it means to you and you and the door still open if you want to talk about this is what this verse means to me but I don't want to sit down and talk about the 35 chapters Job wrote or this verse that you want to recite just tell me what it means to you yeah we and if that would change if you didn't have that but what would change about you if you didn't have that verse yeah that might be a better conversation for the future I think right now maybe we should just work on disciplining ourselves on on staying focused on what the agreed upon conversation was and if you want to make a conversation about God in the future I'll show up there but I want to be honest with you my my point even when I'm doing s e is not to figure out how much you love your God it's to figure out how you came to your God conclusion okay and at my point is not to to challenge your God belief or challenge you personally only challenging and you have to give it to me like a conversation takes two people to have this you have to give me the reasoning that you used to get through that I believe otherwise I'm not interested in having that conversation and then you're just forcing me to listen to you yeah okay yeah definitely I'm not forcing you to do anything and at the beginning of this conversation we we before we press the record button button I actually we also say that sometimes conversations lead us to talk about things that we go on a tangent that's as you actually uh yeah that's really bad that's like a bad warning that's like saying hey man or like going up to a girl in a bar and be like hey I'll buy you a drink and whatever happens yeah this is the small print hey it's not my fault that this conversation led to a place that you specifically said you didn't want to approach here I feel like there's there's like some somehow your fault I just can't articulate it at the present time man there's something poetic about the fact that he used tangent when you think about geometry oh religion and and atheism are far from tangential you know like I mean he should have said perpendicular that would have made more sense oh that'd be nice that'd be nice totally separate yes we got less than our conversations we got like one minute left let's let's finish this um you mentioned about yourself when you talked about uh video games so I think that nothing nothing is happening here that is not fair at all but cool I actually wonder if you not wanted to hear that just side about not me because I'm not important uh anymore just a conversation that way we'll do it in the future and you can set up the conversation that way and I can show you definitely but not this conversation because we're already out of time yeah well time thank you very much I think that's and that was it listen I'm I just want to make the point clear this isn't the first time I've had this happen to me and in each case I've done exactly this where it's like you don't have my consent to talk about this either stick to the thing that we agreed on or this conversation is more or less over we're more or less already out of time no I love everything it's great and I'm being cordial I'm being nice and I'm keeping doors open but I'm not here to listen to your bible verses I'm not here to tell you I'll listen to about why your favorite god's your favorite god I want to know about the things that we talked about or the things that we agree to talk about or at least your reasoning to arrive at a conclusion not the conclusion itself and it's not an attack on you it's just I want to figure out the most reasonable way to arrive at conclusions and you're not giving it to me so what's this conversation about that's basically it he's telling you what he believes instead of why or how he reached it yeah but yeah I'm gonna be posting the full interview on my channel you'll be able to see that I think the very first three parts are still really good the ones about atheism and then it was only that last five minutes where it's like well you won't really talk about christian is like of course not they're worried to anyone else who wants to have a date with me it's like we're gonna have it on what we agreed to talk about and that's it yeah yeah anyway what's news local news let's do it well just want to talk about the local atheist groups free-thinking groups here in possible